InComm Payments, a payments tech firm, and doxo, the largest bill pay directory in the US, have joined forces to allow doxo users to pay household bills with cash at 60,000+ retail locations throughout the US.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta reveals that a little more than 12% of bills (equating to around 1.9 billion of the 15.5 billion bills paid by US households every year) are being paid with cash. Paying with cash is still a “critical need” for many consumers who “regularly receive cash income or who don’t have bank accounts and need to cover household obligations,” the announcement revealed.
For doxo’s “all-in-one” bill pay service, adding cash payments to its portfolio of easy payment options is vital to offering customers the added flexibility and convenience required to “stay on top of household bills and improve financial health,” according to a release.
Through InComm Payments’ partnership with doxo, users can pay their bills with cash at over 60,000 retail locations in the US – including “some of the most recognized retail chains across the country,” like Dollar General, Family Dollar and participating 7-Eleven stores – leveraging InComm Payments’ VanillaDirectTM retailer network.
As noted in the release, the cash payment process is straightforward and uses the same standard, secure checkout doxo offers for all bills, “only with the added option to select ‘Pay with Cash.'”
As explained in the announcement, the system then “provides a barcode via the doxo mobile app that users scan at the register of the nearest participating retail location to instantly pay billers in their doxo account with cash.” After a doxo customer makes the cash payment, doxo “securely delivers payment to the biller – just the same as payments made with checking accounts, credit cards, debit cards, or Apple Pay,” the release noted.
Tim Richardson, SVP of Business Development at InComm Payments, stated:
“We’re excited to partner with doxo and leverage our companies’ combined capabilities to meet the needs and expectations of consumers. Our cash payment network is perfectly aligned with doxo’s vision of empowering consumers to improve their financial lives, and in this instance providing their users with a simple and convenient experience for making cash payments to household billers in an extensive network of retail locations across the United States.”
Many American households continue to struggle to stay on top of their monthly bills, and the COVID-19 crisis had made that even more difficult, particularly for consumers that may be unbanked, underbanked, or receive a portion of their salary or earnings in cash.
doxo’s main value has “proven to be very timely — the app simplifies the task of staying on top of bills and helps improve financial health,” the announcement noted.
Roger Parks, doxo VP and co-founder, remarked:
“We’re on a mission to simplify and reduce the anxiety that comes along with managing and paying household bills so that our users feel empowered to improve their financial health. Our rapid growth speaks to the demand for more bill payment capabilities and we are committed to providing the greatest flexibility possible to our users as they manage paying bills. The ability to pay with cash at more than 60,000 retail locations throughout the U.S. using InComm Payments’ technology is the perfect fit for our users and billers on our network.”
By offering clients with another way to settle their bills, this partnership also aims to provide an additional benefit for billers on doxo’s network, “specifically the cash-preferred customer.”
A little over 13% of utility bills in the U.S. are paid using cash, “amounting to $49.4 billion of the $380 billion spent per year on these types of bills,” the update noted while pointing out that these cash transactions need more physical office locations and processing costs when compared to virtual payments.
As noted in the update, doxo’s cash pay capability, “leveraging InComm Payments’ nationwide retail network, now adds hundreds or thousands of cash-pay locations within the service territory of billers on doxo’s network, while still allowing the biller to receive the payment digitally.”
By joining doxo’s national payment network, billers can now “add this capability as a benefit for their users, without having to manage the complexity, the integration or the expense themselves.”
As confirmed in the announcement, this feature will be “available for doxo users in the coming months and will roll out to the approximately 60,000 participating retail locations in InComm Payments’ network.”