Paying bills is everyone’s least favorite chore. It requires balancing when bills are due, flexing memory muscles when it comes to remembering passwords, and signing in and out of different billing sites. To help solve that problem, Mastercard has announced the Mastercard Bill Pay Exchange, a digital solution that will make it easier for consumers to view, manage, and pay telecom, utility, rent, credit card, mortgage, and other personal bills without having to set up accounts with different billers or remember multiple passwords and dates for payments each month.
Offered through banks and credit unions, this technology will enable consumers to use their mobile banking app to easily set up all billers, receive notifications when a bill is due, see bill details, and manage multiple bills in one place, including specifying when and how much to pay.
Mastercard Bill Pay Exchange will link to The Clearing House’s real-time payments infrastructure, which was built with technology from Vocalink, a Mastercard company. This will enable consumers to pay their bills instantly from their bank accounts—in a matter of seconds versus days—reducing the delay between when the payment is made and when it is reflected in the consumer’s balance.
“Mastercard is accelerating its vision of digitizing all forms of payments to make life simple, seamless, and secure,” says Colleen Taylor, Executive Vice President, New Payment Flows, North America, Mastercard. “With Vocalink, we are in a unique position as the only network that has the technology capabilities and know-how to build faster payments applications at the pace the market requires.”
Mastercard Bill Pay Exchange will bring speed, transparency, and efficiency to bill payments. The solution will reduce reconciliation costs by delivering remittance details in bulk or alongside payments, and will decrease the costs associated with mailing paper bills and processing paper checks. Mastercard will begin product integration and testing of Bill Pay Exchange with partners in 2019, with commercial availability the same year.
As additional convenience offering, Mastercard has launched two new benefits for World and World Elite cardholders. For both, the company is offering the Hotel Stay Guarantee. Cardholders who experience any problems with their three-star or higher rated hotel can contact a Lifestyle Manager at any time who will work directly with the hotel to resolve the issue. If the issue can’t be solved—like a waterpark that’s out of service—the Lifestyle Manager will book cardholders at comparable hotels.
In addition, the company is offering its Lowest Hotel Rate Guarantee to these cardholders. If a cardholder books a hotel with Mastercard but then finds a lower price online, the company will refund the difference in price. Combined with Mastercard’s Bill Pay Exchange solution, these two benefits offer cardholders a range of perks.