The key to getting consumers to go paperless is to address the ways they manage all their documents, not just their bills. So says doxo, an electronic alternative to document management brought to you by former Qpass executives who launched the new company publicly in October with Sprint as its first customer.
In its words, doxo is an online place for consumers to get organized and go paper-free. While it helps consumers manage all their important documents online, bill payment is the main activity around paper documents with approximately 22 bills per household per month in the U.S. So the company today launched a service called doxoPAY, which is an online payment feature that allows consumers to receive, manage, file – and pay their bills – from multiple service providers such as credit cards, utilities, cable, mobile, insurance and mortgages in one place: www.doxo.com.
More than 50 percent of all consumer bills are paid electronically, but only 15 percent of bills are actually delivered paperlessly. doxo calls this the “paperless adoption gap" and has made closing it the company’s mission in life.
“It isn’t because people like mail. It’s because current approaches don’t work well for the consumer, so they refuse to shut off paper at a pace that businesses need to have happen," said Steve Shivers, CEO of doxo.
Unlike bill payment aggregation sites like banks, doxo manages all important documents and takes a page from the social networking world by letting consumers to reach out and get their billers or document companies to join doxo.
Old habits die hard and Shivers said current electronic payment methods only reinforce the habit consumers have of using paper bills as a reminder to get them paid and by not providing a reassuring system of storing documents for the long term.
“When consumers sit down to pay bills online, most of the time their reminder system is the stack of paper bills sitting by their computer," Shivers said.
doxo enables customers to connect with multiple businesses in one place to receive and store bills and other important documents. By connecting with a business on doxo, the user is granting permission for that business to turn off paper mail and deliver documents securely and privately to their doxo account.
Using doxo ensures 100 percent paperless adoption. And doxoPAY has much lower payment processing costs than credit cards or other forms of consumer payment. Adding doxoPAY can significantly reduce the average cost of payment transactions and help speed collections, the company said. This allows providers to enjoy bi-directional savings on transactions, both in delivering bills and documents, and now in receiving payment.
For businesses already receiving electronic payments, doxoPAY delivers funds consistent with existing payment processes and no new integration effort is typically required. Furthermore, any business with a bank account can now receive payment electronically via doxoPAY. Since providers pay doxo only on a transactional basis per document delivered, they immediately realize a significant savings over the cost of mailing documents and payment processing.
“There is a huge ecosystem around how to deliver a bill electronically, but those providers aren’t really helping other companies that aren’t bill-centric. That creates a disconnect with consumers and we are out to solve that," Shivers said.
doxo investors include venture firms Mohr Davidow Ventures and Bezos Expeditions, the venture investment fund of Jeff Bezos. The company is led by experienced leaders from Qpass, Amazon, Snapfish, Blue Nile and Microsoft. The company is headquartered in Seattle.
