Convenient billpay starts with self-service, so KioskMarketPlace.com recently published a guide describing the benefits bill-payment kiosks provide and how they can add to both the biller's and the retailer's bottom line.
The bill-pay kiosk business has been growing steadily for years, but according to industry insiders, it has started gaining even more traction in the marketplace in the last two years, in no small part because of advances in technology and the growing demand for convenience, as well as an economic recession that has caused customers to manage cash flow more closely.
But self-service billpay also helps the silent third party in the billpay equation — the retailers, such as grocery stores, that take bill payments at their customer-service counters or through their cashiers.
Approximately a quarter of the U.S. population is either unbanked or underbanked, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Nine million households in the United States are unbanked, while another 21 million are underbanked.
Although a significant part of the self-service market is the unbanked and underbanked, said Rockville, Md.-based Pay-Ease CEO Marc Meisel, the largest part of the market is that which caters to all communities.
"It really services the banked as well as the unbanked," he said. "[But] there is a tremendous, growing underbanked population. And the question has been how to get to them, and the kiosks have been seen as the answer."
Both billers and retailers are cashing in by offering the self-service option.
"Our experience has been that if you provide people with more options to pay, they're just more likely to pay you," said Ed Walsh, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Revenue.
For retailers such as Homeland Supermarkets, having bill-pay kiosks provides a laundry list of benefits, from cutting labor costs to increasing customer traffic and spending.
To learn more about these benefits, click here to read the guide.
