NACHA Releases Online Bill Pay Best Practices

The NACHA Council for Electronic Billing and Payment (CEBP) released best practices for reducing online bill payment exceptions and the $155 million they will cost billers this year.

Exceptions are online bill payments sent by bank bill pay sites to billers that are unable to be posted accurately and promptly upon receipt. Billers tend to incur the most expense related to exception handling because they are typically the first line of contact for consumers that receive late payment notices these exceptions generate.

Although exceptions account for less than 1 percent of U.S. online bill payment volume, for those most in need of reviewing their best practices the percentage of affected transactions can be much higher. The CEBP’s best practices guide will help billers, third party processors and financial institutions identify practical methods that can be used to decrease exception volume.

“One of the key causes of exceptions is industry merger and acquisition activity. When billers merge, the different accounting and billing systems each company uses can affect consumers account numbers,” said Jane Wallace, of Wallace Consulting and co-chair of the CEBP’s business-to-consumer work group, which sponsored this initiative. The group suggests, for example, that billers feeling the effects of consolidation contact their bill payment consolidators or third-party processors for detailed instructions for handling high-volume account numbering changes.

Jardon Bouska, division president of CheckFree Electronic Biller Services, said these third-party processors can eliminate many exceptions before they happen by adopting these new best practices recommendations.

Darlene Lohman, product manager for MasterCard RPPS and a member of the leadership team for this project said it is cirtical companies educate consumers on the importance of updating their account information in their online payment service, so consumers can avoid the hassles, and billers can avoid the costs associated with correcting the problems.

A complete list of the CEBP’s best practices can be found on its new Web site at http://cebp.nacha.org/ExceptionProcessingMgmntProgram/index.html.