Automatic Payment Plans Grow

Consumers' efforts to deal with a shortage of time are evident in the growth that Visa has experienced with its automatic bill payment program. According to Cardline (Faulkner and Gray's daily online publication on card and payment products), the transactions processed by Visa's bill-paying service rose to $23.3 billion in fiscal 2000 from $4.4 billion in fiscal 1995. Volume is expected to rise by 35 percent from fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2001. Visa's research reveals the reason for the dramatic growth: "nearly a third of American consumers like the idea of using their dwindling free time to do almost anything other than writing checks for recurring monthly bills." Of course, merchants are also pleased to receive payments promptly and to avoid the expense of mailing out monthly bills. Visa is also working on a program to keep credit card account numbers current to avoid charge-backs.