Digitization of payments services helped customers pay their utility and energy bills online. Most large energy and utility companies adopt payment gateway technologies that allow them to regularly collect bill payments from their customers. These technologies make online bill payment accessible to all kinds of residential, commercial, and industrial customers.
Why Should Companies Collect Energy Bills Online?
Collect Payments Instantly from Commercial and Residential Clients
ACH and credit card technologies help energy companies instantly collect payments from their customers. Now, these companies don’t need to send a physical invoice to their customers and wait for a check to process. Energy companies that previously sent invoices via mail took days to process the invoices, but now they do it in seconds with online payment technology.
Payment processors like iCheckGateway.com help these large energy companies:
- Efficiently process thousands of transactions over credit card and ACH networks.
- Go Green with online payments by using less paper and postal systems.
- Offer a multi-payment option to help these companies satisfy the digital requests of their customers.
Offer More Accessibility to Customers with Contactless Payments
Contactless payments are the need of the hour. More and more customers now rely on online and contactless payment technologies to pay for products and services. By adopting one of the following contactless payment solutions, energy companies offer a safer and more convenient way of paying their bills on time:
- SMS Payments: With SMS payments, companies send their customers a simple payment reminder and link to pay online. This link redirects the customer to a hosted payment portal where the customer logs in to pay the due amount.
- Hosted Payment Portals: The hosted payment portal mimics the energy company’s website interface and creates a seamless payment experience.
- Security: PCI-compliant tasks managed by a payment gateway manage the data so that the companies don’t need to worry about finding multiple vendors to manage the security aspect of their security transactions.
- Advanced iFrame: When integrating software technology for numerous platforms, their business-to-consumer clients know that their customers’ sensitive data stays locked behind safe encryption.
- IVR Payments: Customers pay safely via a phone transaction. They share their credit card details on the phone with an IVR phone system to process their energy bills. Moreover, advanced IVR systems also help customers get more information about their bills, including wattage use, total bill amount, pending amount, and late payment data.
Learn more about the benefits of contactless payments.
Collect Payments Automatically with Recurring Billing
Energy companies quickly set up a payment plan for their customers with recurring billing technology. These companies automatically withdraw the set energy bill amount from their customers’ bank accounts using ACH debit transactions. Considering this, such an automatic facility eliminates the need for constant payment reminders and dramatically reduces the late payment cycles. They collect a one-time authorization from their existing customers to bill them dynamically based on their monthly energy usage.
Offer Less Processing Fees with ACH
Studies show that over 20% of Americans could not pay their electricity bills in 2021, primarily due to rising energy prices. Consequently, under such circumstances, companies must do everything they can to make paying energy bills cheap and straightforward. By adopting robust payment methods, energy companies help customers in remote areas pay for their accounts with smaller processing charges.
Payment technologies like ACH help customers save those valuable percentage points in processing fees while paying their energy bills. The minor processing charges quickly rack up to large amounts, especially for the commercial and industrial customers that pay massive energy bills via credit cards.
Generate Invoices Automatically
The best payment processors have access to technologies that integrate with back-office accounting tools like QuickBooks to generate invoices at scale automatically. Massive energy companies that need to create thousands of invoices every month will easily automate the entire process using developer plugins by iCheckGateway.com.
Companies save thousands of person-hours every month by automatically generating these invoices.
Leverage Easier Reconciliation
Easier reconciliation is another benefit of collecting energy bills online. With automatic two-way sync between the virtual terminal and back-office accounting tools, energy companies complete their reconciliation processes with a single click. Also, they step up their battle against frauds committed due to insufficient funds, invalid routing numbers, and mistyped account information.
So, partnering with a Nacha-preferred partner helps businesses expand their reach over the internet. It also helps companies prevent fraud and collect payments seamlessly over credit card and ACH platforms within seconds. Learn more about our payment solutions and technologies by getting on a short 15-minute call with an expert.
Date originally published: April 24, 2022