Update
After having an account for over a month, there was still no bill providers on-board. While the service is still in beta, I expected that some providers would be signed by now. I have now asked Digital Post Australia to delete my account.
Check the calendar, yep we’re almost at the end of 2012 and more than 80% of Australians are still getting their bills the same way they have for 30 years, but paper. If you’re comfortable with getting bills delivered to you electronically or just wanted to avoid the print & distribution fee, then you’re likely getting some of you’re bills digitally.
While individual companies emailing bills to you does work, it’s pretty easy to miss one and email and payment. What if there was a place where you could see all outstanding and historical bills in one place. Turns out there is a better way, Digital Post Australia.
This service is currently in exclusive preview phase, but you can sign up at https://digitalpost.com.au/invite. If you get accepted, you’ll need to verify your postal address. The verification code is snail mailed to your physical address to verify you actually live there. From there you’ll be able to start receiving bills in your Digital Postbox. Unfortunately you can’t pay bills directly from here, you just get linked out to the provider’s website.
Your Digital Postbox, doesn’t just have to be for bills though, it can also include document scans, receipts and more which will be handy at tax time. Businesses are incentivised to provide your bills electronically to increase on-time payments and reduce cost of distribution.
In terms of security, there’s not a lot of information about how the service is configured, only that Digital Post use ‘Bank-level’ security. Each mailer does need to be authorised and verified which means SPAM won’t be a problem.
I’m still waiting for my verification to arrive, but as someone who lives online, a single interface to manage all my bills is an inviting service. Given it’s free for users, that makes Digital Postbox even more inviting. The Digital Post currently only offers we web version but is currently developing iOS, Android and desktop apps. I’d love to see Windows Phone added to that list.
For more information, check out https://digitalpost.com.au
