PayScan

A: Yes. A number of systems have been designed, developed, and used through the years. They fall into several categories:

• Good ideas that didn’t quite make it. A number of not-quite-workable barcode payment prototypes and patents date back to the 1990s and perhaps earlier. These explored the basic concepts, but were abandoned because they didn’t surmount the core technical problems.
• Single-biller solutions. A number of large utilities and similar billers have used barcoded invoices to expedite payment at their own payment locations. These did their intended job, but couldn’t scale up for use by many billers at many retail locations.
• Nationwide solutions. Outside the U.S., several countries have set up successful barcoded payment infrastructures. These rely on a uniform approach to billing – all barcoded invoices look essentially the same, and since they can’t easily be mistaken for anything else, retailers can confidently accept them for payment. This wouldn’t work in the U.S., or in other countries where consumers receive a hodgepodge of statement types and other barcoded documents.

All these traditional approaches suffer from a common problem: there is no automatic way to test whether a particular barcode represents a bill payment, as opposed to one of the countless other barcodes that might appear at a retail POS scanner.

A: No, they can’t be used for payment; but also no, they won’t interfere with payment using PayScan® technology. Billers use barcodes for a variety of purposes, ranging from document sorting to data capture. Each biller encodes whatever values are most useful, and knows precisely what format will be read during processing. A retailer or other third party couldn’t use these barcodes without knowing their precise format and meaning. Moreover, each biller uses a different format. To process such a barcode, a clerk or customer would first have to identify the biller, e.g. by picking it from a list, and then the retailer’s POS system would need to retrieve that biller’s format rules from a database of the many possible barcodes that might appear. Obviously, this would never be practical, even if retailers were willing to rely on manual bill type identification.

A: Barcodes are the familiar blocks of black-and-white bars that appear on virtually every product, as well as on shipments, transmittal documents, and many other places. They have been with us for a long time, but they became ubiquitous through steady improvements in the cost and accuracy of barcode scanners. The most visible form of barcode is the UPC code, a twelve-digit number used to identify nearly every item sold at retail. However, there are many other types and uses of barcode, with different sizes, representations, and formats.

A: Like most barcode scanners manufactured in the last ten years, retail POS scanners are capable of reading many different barcode symbologies, including several suitable for bill payment processing using PayScan® technology.

A: Bills and other kinds of invoices are send to customers by most businesses. The vast majority are the monthly utility and other household bills that we all receive throughout the year. High-volume billers include:

• Electric, gas, and water utilities
• Telephone, cable TV, and other communications providers
• Insurance companies
• Banks, credit unions, and finance companies
• Medical providers
• Insurance companies

A: According to the US Postal Service, which conducts its authoritative annual Household Diary Study, there were some 19 billion bills sent through the mail in 2006.

A: High-volume billers, like all large companies, are anxious to reduce paper handling and manual processing steps. These represent costly overhead, inflating the cost of service and reducing operating margins. Most billers, and particularly utilities, are sensitive to issues like these:

• Physical handling of checks and money orders
• USPS delays and losses
• Payment uncertainty
• Customers who pay in person
• Customers who pay in cash
• Late payments and disconnect decisions
• The risk of disconnecting a customer who has already paid
• Directing customers to walk-in payment locations
• Bill processing errors
• Funds transfer delays
• Regulatory complexity related to payment choices

A: In-lane bill payment at mainstream retailers will change how consumers make payments.

• Payment locations will be at many familiar, regularly-visited stores.
• An in-lane payment will not require a special trip, but can be combined with normal shopping.
• The payment process will be as fast as normal retail purchases.

Consumers have always chosen convenience. Mainstream consumers will choose in-lane bill payment, because it’s easier than writing a check.

A: Large mainstream retailers require rapid, low-overhead transactions in their checkout lanes. This is because of high volumes and rapid sales flow, and also because large retailers keep prices low with small margins. Such retailers will not accept long delays in checkout lanes, or long lines at service counters. Before the PayScan® solution, the available payment technologies simply weren’t rapid enough for retailers to install them in the checkout lane.