Billeo, Inc. Launches Next Generation Bill Pay Service

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 15, 2005--

Free Tool Enables Consumers to Easily View and Pay Bills at over 4,200 Biller Websites, Make Last Minute Payments and Pay with a Credit Card

“During beta testing, many people adopted the tool's extra features to assist them with managing their non-biller websites”

Billeo, Inc., a privately held company in Silicon Valley, today announced the launch of their bill pay service that enables US consumers to gain greater convenience and control over how they view, pay and manage their bills. Coupling innovative toolbar and web services technologies with the largest backend directory of billers, Billeo delivers a fresh approach to online bill pay.

Available free to consumers, the service was developed to address the needs of those who have discovered the advantages of visiting billers' websites to make last minute payments, pay bills with a reward-points credit card, view detailed statements and access self-service features. Billeo consolidates bill management tasks while making it simple to visit multiple biller sites. Consumers who currently use a bank's online bill pay service can also use Billeo to realize the benefits of biller-direct payments. These customers can continue using their bank's service for the few remaining bills which can't be paid directly on a website.

Promoting the Trend Beyond Online Banking

"For years, we've all been hearing about how biller-direct online payments will become the new paradigm for both consumers seeking more convenience and control, and companies seeking a more direct interaction with their customers," said Billeo, Inc. President, Nancy Langer. "But until now, the process of going from site to site has proven too tedious to promote widespread adoption. Billeo provides a simple, free tool that empowers consumers and makes biller-direct payments and bill management both convenient and beneficial to them."

"With Billeo, EBPP (electronic bill presentment and payment) consolidation is no longer tied to online banking, but to the Web browser," said Gwenn Bezard of Aite Group. "While CheckFree (Nasdaq:CKFR) turned EBPP consolidation into a fixture of online banking, Billeo may well make EBPP consolidation a fixture of Web surfing."

To use the service, individuals need to register for a free Billeo account and download a small toolbar plug-in for the Internet Explorer browser.

Convenience and Control for Both Power Users and Neophytes

The toolbar serves as the user's personal assistant for online bills, making it easy to log in to their various accounts, and eliminating the problem of forgotten passwords. By using the auto-fill function to provide credit card, debit card or checking account information, users can quickly complete payment transactions. Plus, a record keeping feature allows customers to save a snapshot of their payment confirmation pages.

Additionally, Billeo can even generate automatic payment reminders to help keep customers from forgetting to pay a bill. Users can keep track of all online payments in one location and receive all bill-related email in a separate @billeo.com Inbox.

Works for More Than Just Bills

Billeo's powerful functionality can be used for virtually any website, providing assistance with login information, passwords and auto-fill functions. And its page saving feature allows users to make a quick jpeg snapshot of any webpage in their browser -- such as a travel itinerary or a news story -- that they can archive or email to others.

"During beta testing, many people adopted the tool's extra features to assist them with managing their non-biller websites," said Raj Lalwani, Billeo, Inc. founder and CEO. "We knew they'd love the Billeo toolbar's core functionality, but we were pleasantly surprised by how many people used and really appreciated the extra features we built into it."

Consumers can go to www.billeo.com and sign up for a free Billeo account.

Card Issuers and Billers Can Distribute Billeo to Their Consumers

By promoting paying bills with a credit card, issuers can tap into a trillion-dollar opportunity with consumers and small businesses (source: Visa USA PDM). Billeo provides a unique opportunity for card issuers to accelerate the adoption of plastic for paying bills and all eCommerce purchases. When a card issuer signs up to distribute the Billeo toolbar, their customer's card will be preloaded in the Billeo e-wallet, with "top-of-the-wallet" placement.

"Billeo's toolbar participates in the trend toward a greater usage of cards in recurring payments," said Gwenn. "We see Billeo's simple concept far more threatening for the legacy processors than Yodlee's solution that has yet to mature."

Billers can freely distribute the product to their customers, as well. Billeo can enhance the user's experience of interacting with a biller's website; and these businesses can quickly realize an increase in e-payments and self-service. Companies can also sign up for fee-based premium services that steer consumers to self-service, target promotions to them when they are paying bills and deliver secure email communications.

"Because Billeo uses patent-pending machine learning and does not perform any website scraping or data management, and we do not participate in the payment infrastructure -- we leverage the billers' -- we offer a much lower cost of ownership and delivery versus our competitors," said Nancy Langer, president of the company.

About Billeo, Inc.

Billeo is a privately held firm in Silicon Valley, California. Its unique toolbar solution and the largest biller directory in the industry offer consolidation of online bills for consumers. Billeo works without any data aggregation or screen scraping. Billeo -- Your personal assistant for online bills.