U.S. Postal Service Enters Online Bill Payment Market

Wary of losing its lucrative bill and payment delivery business to the Internet, the U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday launched a service that allows people to pay all their bills via computer on one site.

The service, called USPSeBillPay, is being made available immediately, Postmaster General William Henderson said.

New customers get to use USPSeBillPay free for the first six months after enrolling. After that, there are two service plans: Pay Everyone at $6.00 a month, which includes 20 payments and 40 cents for each additional payment, and Pay As You Go for $2 a month and 40 cents for each payment.

The Postal Service worked with CheckFree Holdings Corp. and YourAccounts.Com, a unit of DST Systems Inc.’s Output Technology Solutions, to develop the system.

Interested customers can sign up for the service online at the Postal Service’s Web site, https://www.usps.gov.

Companies will be able to send bills electronically to participants in the service, and individuals will be able to pay all of their bills electronically. If someone wants to make a payment to a company that does not have an electronic connection to the service, the post office will simply issue a check, said postal spokesman Mark Saunders.

The eBillPay service soon will include an electronic postmark, which stamps a date and time to billing data to prevent tampering.

Shares in Norcross, Ga.-based CheckFree fell $2.50 to close at $62.50 on Nasdaq.