EBIDS, or the Electronic Billing Information Delivery Service, is an Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network solution developed by NACHA to increase the availability of electronic bills for consumers. EBIDS allows businesses to deliver electronic bills to consumer online banking accounts for presentment to consumers and to receive authorized credit payments through the safe and secure ACH Network. EBIDS notably:

• Uses open, interoperable, and secure standards to facilitate bill delivery and payment through online banking channels;
• Provides revenue for participating financial institutions;
• Reduces costs for billers and extends eBill delivery options; and
• Maintains consumer privacy of financial account information.

The vision for EBIDS is to develop standards that make eBilling/payment as easy as Direct Deposit. Just like any employer can send a payroll deposit to an employee at any financial institution, the vision for EBIDS is to allow any biller to send a bill to any customer at any financial institution. NACHA’s ACH formats and rules will enable banks, billers, and eBilling providers to standardize Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) transactions to make this possible.

There are four basic processes: biller enrollment, consumer enrollment, bill presentment, and bill payment. The enrollment processes are one-time activities. All the consumer processes originate via the ACH.

1. Biller Enrollment
• Biller financial institutions enroll billers in the Biller Directory.
• Consumer financial institutions download Biller Directory information and update online banking payee profiles.
2. Consumer Enrollment
• Consumers create electronic payees in their online banking service, and enroll for an ebill with a participating biller.
• Consumer Financial Institutions transmit enrollment requests to biller in an ENR transaction.
• Billers acknowledge the enrollment, also using an ENR.
3. Bill Presentment
• Billers send 0 dollar CTXs with bill data in addenda to consumers’ online banking accounts at participating Consumer Financial Institutions.
• A URL is included in the CTX addenda linking consumers back to full bill detail at biller sites (no additional sign in required for the biller site).
4. Bill Payment
• Consumers authorize payments and ACH (CIE) credits are sent to the billers.

Financial institutions:

• Provides transaction revenue
• Supports online banking: lowers attrition, higher account balances, increases cross-sell, lower service costs
• Leverages ACH Network for enrollment, presentment, and payment
• Lowest cost channel and best potential reach
• Uses industry standards – NACHA rules
• Opens development by being non-proprietary
• Enables a more direct working relationship between biller and banks for EBPP
• Provides new revenue opportunity for bill delivery/remittance services

Billers:

• Meets preference for multiple channels
• Increases adoption
• Reduces unapplied payments
• Guarantees funds
• Eliminates administrative returns
• Accelerates posting of payment
• Reduces costs
• Improves customer experience

Consumers:

• Maintains privacy of information – financial account information remains with financial institution
• Retains control of account and timing of payment
• Provides access to more bills (bills are consolidated at one site)
• Provides access to bill detail through single sign-on

EBIDS uses open, interoperable, and secure standards for all transactions. Consumer enrollment, bill presentment, and bill payment transactions use specified ACH Standard Entry Class codes to originate transactions between parties.

EBIDS is a “thin bill” model, meaning that billers send summary bill information and provide a URL that links customers to full bill detail at biller Web sites. To access full detail, the consumer logs into his or her online banking account, and clicks a “view bill detail” link. No additional sign-in is required.

This single sign-on action is facilitated by a federated authentication model, using another open standard, Security Assertion Markup Language (2.0). All technical specifications are available in the EBIDS Product Design and the EBIDS SAML Technical Specification documents.
Participant systems must comply with ACH rules and the EBIDS Product Design requirements. The Product Design and related specifications are available to participants.

Billers pay a fee to the consumer financial institution for every eBill enrollment sent to the biller, and for every eBill received from the biller. There are no other EBIDS specific system fees. Other start up costs--payable receivables, infrastructure development (if needed),etc. --will vary by participant. NACHA has additional information on the EBIDS fee structure and amount.

Prospective organizations may apply to participate in EBIDS. For more information, contact: Robert Unger, senior director, NACHA, 703-561-3913, runger@nacha.org.