Conceptually, electronic bill payment transactions involved three roles (Exhibit 2):
• Consumer Service Providers (CSP) provided the consumer interface. The CSP interacted with the consumer, transferring transactions and authorizations to the other participants that were mostly invisible to the consumer. The CSP was typically a bank, but it could also be a portal or a payment service that interacted directly with consumers. For example, current CSPs include Intuit, Yahoo!, and the U.S. Postal Service as well as banks and brokerages.
• Biller Service Providers (BSP) created online bills for billers and routed them for payment. Some large billers did not use BSPs, as they prepared the electronic bills themselves. However, the complexities of billing often made it worthwhile for billers to outsource this operation to BSPs.
• Consolidators (also known as aggregators or integrators) consolidated bills from BSPs and directly from billers, routed them to the CSP chosen by the consumer, and then routed the debits and confirmations back.
While these roles were conceptually distinct, a company could play multiple roles. For example, CheckFree was primarily a consolidator, but it also often served in the role of BSP and sometimes was the CSP.