BPAY is an electronic bill payment system in Australia that allows individuals and businesses to pay bills through their bank’s online or telephone banking service. It’s a highly popular and established system in Australia for paying a wide variety of bills (utilities, phone, credit cards, insurance, etc.). Each biller that participates is assigned a unique Biller Code, and the customer’s bill will include that code and a Customer Reference Number specific to their account. To make a payment, the payer logs into their bank, chooses the BPAY option, and enters the biller code, reference number, and the amount to pay. The bank then transfers the funds to the biller through the BPAY network (usually settling within a day).
BPAY is convenient because it consolidates payment under one roof (the payer’s bank interface) rather than needing to deal with each biller separately or writing checks. It’s analogous to the concept of using your bank’s bill-pay in the US, but it’s more standardized across all Australian banks via the common BPAY scheme. Additionally, BPAY can be used for one-off payments or scheduled for recurring bills. From a business perspective, offering BPAY means a streamlined collection of customer payments; companies receive a daily electronic file of who paid and can reconcile easily via the reference numbers.
There’s also BPAY View, which delivers bills electronically to one’s banking portal. For payroll or employees, BPAY might be used if an employee wants to allocate part of their pay to go toward bills (though typically, BPAY is initiated by the account holder rather than by payroll direct).
BPAY is an example of a domestic electronic payment innovation that achieved near-universal adoption in its home country. In summary, BPAY is a widely-used Australian system that simplifies bill payments by letting people pay various billers through their own bank’s electronic banking platform using unique codes
