Apparatus and method for bill presentment and payment

A method comprising the steps of:

• providing, under control of an operator of a payment processing network, a bill presentment service wherein bills received from a plurality of billing entities are made available to a plurality of consuming entities via a plurality of consuming entity service providers;
• obtaining, by said operator of said payment processing network, a given one of said bills from a given one of said billing entities, said given one of said bills having a single biller account number associated therewith;
• and
• routing said given one of said bills having said single biller account number associated therewith from said given one of said billing entities to multiple ones of said consuming entity service providers for presentation to a corresponding one of said consuming entities via said multiple ones of said consuming entity service providers.

A method comprising the steps of:

• providing, under control of an operator of a payment processing network, a bill presentment service wherein bills received from a plurality of billing entities are made available to a plurality of consuming entities via a plurality of consuming entity service providers;
• providing, by said operator of said payment processing network, at least a portion of a bill payment service wherein said consuming entities are afforded an option of paying said bills from said plurality of billing entities, wherein said step of providing said bill presentment service is carried out without enrollment of said plurality of consuming entities, further comprising:
• receiving from said plurality of billing entities an indication of ability to send said bills in electronic form;
• storing data indicative of said ability to send said bills in electronic form;
• receiving from said plurality of consuming entity service providers an indication of ability to receive said bills in electronic form;
• storing data indicative of said ability to receive said bills in electronic form;
• tracking a plurality of transactions to identify those of said plurality of consuming entities for whom said bills in electronic form are intended, said tracking in turn comprising:
• storing, in a relationship table, based on historical data, billing entity identifiers, billing entity account numbers, and consuming entity service provider identifiers;
• and
• upon said operator of said payment processing network obtaining a bill from a given one of said billing entities in electronic form, consulting said relationship table to obtain at least one of said consuming entity service provider identifiers corresponding to a given one of said billing entity identifiers and a given one of said billing entity account numbers;
• and
• making said bill from said given one of said billing entities available to at least one of said consuming entities corresponding to said at least one of said consuming entity service provider identifiers.