Apparatus and method for bill presentment and payment

Abstract

A bill presentment service, wherein bills received from a plurality of billing entities are made available to a plurality of consuming entities via a plurality of consuming entity service providers, is provided under control of an operator of a payment processing network. Registration and preference data pertaining to each of the plurality of consuming entities are stored in a database, accessible to the operator of the payment processing network. A given one of the consuming entities which has switched from a first one of the consuming entity service providers to a second one of the consuming entity service providers is allowed to access the bill presentment service via the first one of the consuming entity service providers, prior to the switching, and via the second one of the consuming entity service providers, subsequent to the switching, using the stored registration and preference data. A subset of the registration and preference data pertains to the given one of the consuming entities. The given one of the consuming entities is allowed to access the bill presentment service via the second one of the consuming entity service providers without having to take any updating action as to at least a portion of the subset of the registration and preference data. Methods for a 'one click' payment aspect, an aspect wherein a bill having a single biller account number associated therewith is routed from a billing entity to multiple consuming entity service providers for presentation to a consuming entity, and a transaction tracking aspect are also provided, as are corresponding apparatuses and computer program products.