The following is a transcript of the podcast episode between Kelly Seidl, CTO and Co-founder at BillGO and Ryan McEndarfer Editor-in-chief at PaymentsJournal.com on capitalizing on the current bill pay experience.
Listen to full podcast: BillGO Capitalizing On Current Bill Payment Experience
Welcome to the PaymentsJournal podcast. I’m your host, Ryan Mac. And today’s episode is going to be a conversation that I’ve had with Kelly Seidl who is the co-founder and chief technology officer at BillGO during the Money 2020 event now during this conversation, we take a look at the bank Bill Pay experience, and some of the new features that can be brought to this experience, as well as what BillGO’s thoughts are around paper checks. So without any further delay, let’s start the show. So Kelly, thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode. So how does the current bank Bill Pay leaving customers to go elsewhere to make payments?
Kelly Seidl
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great question. What we’re seeing in the industry is that customers have expectations when they come to make payments that bank they’ll pay can’t satisfy. And so customers are going more typically to a direct to biller experience so that they can get a real time confirmation of payment. They have confidence that the payment made it and that they missed any late fees. That experience isn’t present today in bank bill pay. It’s something that we’re trying to change
PaymentsJournal
Yeah, no, I certainly think that that’s, that’s really interesting in terms of just you look at the consumer experience part of it, right? That merchants themselves, I think have really kind of leapfrog banks in terms of just being able to say like, hey, look, you can come to our site, there’s all these payment preferences that that you can enable, and will also send you notifications and things like that, like, hey, like your bill is coming up. It’s ready to be do up your bill was paid. Here’s the confirmation for it. But it certainly presents a fantastic opportunity, I think, for banks, to kind of say like, hey, look, we’d like to recapture some of that market share, because especially where consumers trust, have the most amount of trust in their banks. Right. I mean, that’s kind of what the banks are there for is they’re just trust, that’s their main thing that their brand is built upon their. But kind of moving along here. So what features do you think that will bring people back to bank bill pay and why do you think bank bill pay is the best option?
Kelly Seidl
Yeah, I think you hit on a lot of it. I think consumers want their financial institution to be the center of their world, right? When they are interacting with their money, they want to go to their bank. It’s a trusted source, as you said, and so what do we need to do to make bank bill pay a competitor to direct to biller? And what we’ve heard is that customers truly want a consolidated experience. They want all their information in one spot. And I think when you look at what a bank has to offer that any merchant can’t compete with, is they have visibility into your money. They know when you get paid, they know how much money you have, they know all the bills that you’re paying, and everything that’s going out. And I think when you look at that scenario, it puts banks into a spot as long as they have the data about what you owe, when you owe and it’s accurate, they can help you, as a consumer make better decisions, right? Like, hey, this one, I know you won’t get a late fee for a few days, maybe it’s better to pay your rent first, and then go and pay your cell phone and things like that. And I think that all of that data only exists within the banks.
PaymentsJournal
You know, and I think that’s interesting, right? Because I mean, obviously that there’s that big opportunity there. And you would think like, hey, banks, like why aren’t you just implementing this right away, but clearly there has to be some roadblock here that’s kind of preventing banks from really just jumping on this opportunity. So I kind of obviously see that as it must be a technology gap here. So really, what is it that you see kind of being that technology barrier for banks entering or to coming up with a better experience in terms of bill pay?
Kelly Seidl
Yeah. And it’s something that at BillGO, we’re we’re extremely focused on. So from our perspective, there hasn’t been a ton of innovation within bill pay for decades at this point. And I think what we’re seeing in the industry is a lot of focus on it from companies like us, but you’re also seeing it more at a systemic level as far as the clearing house in real time payments. The Fed with the FedNow, you know, a bunch of people are focusing on what what can we do within payments to create a better experience. But you’re right, that the tech isn’t there, we can’t make payments faster. We haven’t made any innovation to ACH processes in years because there hasn’t been the demand for it. But with tech startups and FinTech companies, disrupting the industry, I think what you’re seeing is, is we have to make a change there and people are doing whatever can to to create a better customer experience.
PaymentsJournal
Alright, so now, I think probably maybe the one thing that people don’t like in payments is checks, right is the dreaded paper check. But yet, they’re still very widely used, especially, you know, especially in the in the b2b realm. And then also when it comes to consumers in paying bills, it’s just kind of how bills were paid. And you’d get your statement, they’d have a little tear off part for the remittance, you’d fill out your check, you’d send it in the mail, you’d go up well checks in the mail to pay this bill. And now everybody’s kind of got, you know, pushing and saying, Okay, well, checks are dead, you know, you see see that headline in the media of that, but I’m curious to see what is BillGO’s approach or thought about paper checks?
Kelly Seidl
Yeah, I would have to say that from our perspective, and data checks are far from dead. What you see and even bank Bill Pay close to 20 to 25% of payments that go through Bill Pay are still being dropped to check. And that’s simply because no one’s focusing on extending the network beyond that. We know that there are close to 4.2 billion companies in the United States and, and there are a good chunk of consumers, I think it’s close to 40% right now that are still using bank bill pay to manage their entire bill process. And so how, how did we stop at hundreds of thousands, right? Like, at best, the bill or networks are hundreds of thousands of companies that we can pay electronically? And that’s at best, depending on how you count and all those things. But how do we close that gap from 100,000 to 4.2 million? And so how do we really bring all of the merchants in the United States into an electronic experience? And, and that’s really what we need to focus on to truly eradicate the tech problem.
PaymentsJournal
Yeah, no, no, I certainly think that, that that’s interesting, you know, kind of the statistics that you’re bringing up there in terms of just a, okay, it’s kind of a seems like a one step at a time approach, right? It’s like, Okay, this problem is not going to get solved overnight. And it’s not going to get solved in the year 2019. Either, like it’s gonna it’s going to take a little bit of time to be able to do that. And I think part of that is also getting consumers to change their behavior because it is still you still do have quite a few consumers that are writing the checks to pay their bills with that.
Kelly Seidl
Well, and I think to add to that, it’s also about merchant behavior as well. And so the reality is merchants have accepted checks, because there isn’t a better way all the solutions out there are either more time costly or not saving them any time, or costing them more money. And so how do you create a solution for merchants, where it saves them time, it’s cost effective, and it truly makes sense for their business? And that’s absolutely one of the things that we’re focused on is how do you how do you create a larger electronic network that works for both the consumer and the merchant? You can’t just focus on one side of the ecosystem.
PaymentsJournal
Yeah. And I’m glad that you touched upon the merchant here, right? Because so let’s say for an example, I’m a merchant, I already have my own mobile app that allows my consumer to be paid for that. What is it that BillGO can kind of essentially bring to on the merchant side of things that can kind of help bank say, hey, you really should on board with us as well to when the merchant can kind of be like, well, I already do have that experience here. Type of thing. So what’s the what’s the advantage is that that BillGO can bring to a bank to help sell that merchant on this idea?
Kelly Seidl
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we’re focused with is really capturing it at the consumer demand. And so when a merchant has a come to my site and pay, a lot of times, that’s a credit card direct experience. And so we have a product targeted in that market to create more an easier user experience around a bank direct payment. And so that’s one thing that we’re helping with consumer direct payments. On the banking side, what we’re doing is we’re allowing the customer to say, hey, I want to pay my landscaper and then we come back and say, Hey, great, your landscapers on the network, it’s going to take us probably three to five days to get that to them. Would you like us to try to enroll them? And so really closing that that loop. Instead of saying like, Hey, Mr. Merchant, I’m the bank. I’d like you to be part of my network really having it come from the customer and saying, Hey, your customers are paying this way. They want a faster way. How can we get integrated with you? How do we make that seamless? And I think, additionally, making that registration process as simple as humanly possible, making that no effort for them integrating into their ERP systems or AR systems, making it a truly better solution than what they’ve seen previously is really how we’re trying to extend it.
PaymentsJournal
Yeah, no. I certainly agree with you, I think it really does come down to that can consumer user experience right consumers are going to go where the incentives are or where that end better experience is, is for them? I mean, I certainly think you I mean, you saw that in terms of the taxi industry and Uber, right? I mean, people just the payment experiences I mean, in the industry is called invisible payments, right? Because it’s kind of like well, it’s just it’s taken care of for me like I don’t even have to worry about it. I put my card on file, I hail a ride and we’re done here that and and i think that that’s a fantastic thing to kind of strive for from a consumer standpoint. Now. So a little bit of a personal question here. So what is it that you are particularly excited when it comes to the bill pay market?
Kelly Seidl
Absolutely. Honestly, I’m loving the attention that we’re giving it. I think it’s a place so my history in payments I in early my career focus more on international payments. And it was interesting when I started to focus more on domestic payments, how behind we were if you look at things like PSD2 in the EU if you look at 3d secure in India, there are so many examples. doing more real time confirmation and real time payments I call request for payment. But these these concepts exist internationally and the fact that as the United States we’re kind of delaying to get there, it’s great to see the revitalization of that market. And so, you know, everything from companies like us to the more established companies everyone’s focusing on and and I think the end of the day competition makes the best consumer products and will, we’re going to know which one wins, I think pretty quick. I think it’ll take us a little time to truly get there. But we believe we’ve got a leg up on industry. So we’re excited to see what comes
PaymentsJournal
Well thank you, Kelly, for taking the time today for speaking to me about BillGO and I hope to have you back on the podcast real soon.
Kelly Seidl
Thank you very much.