Far from happy at the wealth of choice, 72% of US consumers say there are ‘too many’ subscription services, with the average subscriber now shelling out for five different subscriptions every month.

“Bill-payment platform provider PayNearMe Inc. will dramatically expand its merchant network with the addition of Walgreens Co. in an agreement announced Wednesday. The pharmacy chain adds nearly 9,000 Walgreens and Duane Reade locations to PayNearMe’s merchant network, bringing the company’s total to more than 40,000 retail locations. PayNearMe’s platform lets unbanked consumers pay bills at merchant locations ideally situated near their homes.”

“Corpay One, a smart digital bill pay platform for small businesses, today announced the availability of Corpay Mastercard® , its new credit card product for qualified customers. Corpay Mastercard® is fully integrated with the Corpay One bill pay platform, providing small businesses with one, subscription-free solution to make payments and manage spend.”

“Responding to demand from consumers and billers for digital bill-payment options, electronic billing and payment platform provider PayNearMe Inc. on Tuesday announced the addition of PayPal and Venmo to its payment options. A recent study by PayNearMe revealed that 43% of respondents rated the convenience of using PayPal to pay bills as important or very important. In addition, more than 27% of consumers cited Venmo as a preferred way to pay their bills, and 35% of Gen Zers and Millennials wanted the option of using Venmo to pay their bills.”

“ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software , today announced a partnership with KyckGlobal , a digital payments firm, to enhance digital disbursements for biller organizations across the United States, providing an array of options including international and cash payments.”

“Visa is to use its request to pay platform to pilot a consolidated bill payment and subscription management service for UK consumers. Visa is working with partners, including digital billing specialist Revive Management and homelessness charity Crisis to launch the service, which will provide consumers with a single platform from which to alter payment dates, split bills with others, separate payments into smaller sums, forward bills to someone else or communicate directly with the biller.”

“U.S. Bank has expanded its Request for Payment (RfP) services to help billers provide a better bill payment experience to customers. With RfP capabilities added to U.S. Bank eBill Service – a leading digital solution for accounts receivables teams – U.S. Bank commercial clients will now have access to a fully integrated bill delivery and payment platform with the RfP capabilities.”

“Walmart and InComm Payments , a leading payments technology company, today announced a more convenient and efficient way for millions of customers to pay their bills or fund prepaid accounts nationwide at more than 4,700 Walmart locations in the U.S. through VanillaDirect ™.”

“Sila Inc., a fintech software platform that provides payment infrastructure as a service, today announced a partnership with Arcus, a payment-as-a-service platform that enables any business to launch and offer innovative payment solutions across the Americas. By combining both companies’ particular strengths, bill payment to more than 18,000 US billers is now available to their customers. Arcus allows its customers to process bill pay through bill pay APIs to consumer and business accounts. Sila provides an API platform that allows clients to verify identities, link bank accounts, and originate ACH debit and credit transactions. Sila’s API platform also includes functionality for digital wallets. Customers can store value and transfer money from bank accounts to white-label digital wallets representing deposited funds.”

“ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions , today announced a collaboration with PayPal to bring digital wallet payment options to ACI’s biller clients like Monroe County Water Authority (MCWA). PayPal and Venmo will be integrated with ACI Speedpay , giving consumers more options to make bill payments conveniently and securely using the digital methods that suit them best.”

“According to new data from ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions , the use of mobile wallets has increased nearly 50 percent (49%) from 2020 to 2021 among those using digital payments more frequently to pay bills than they did before the pandemic (21.4%). This is a sharp rise compared to increases in other digital payment methods, including a biller’s website (11%) and a biller’s mobile app (6%).”

“PayNearMe , the modern and reliable payments platform known for making payments easy for both businesses and customers, announced that effective August 2021 PayNearMe customers will be able to complete bill payment transactions at participating Walmart locations. By expanding its partnership with Green Dot (NYSE: GDOT), a financial technology company committed to seamlessly connecting people to their money, PayNearMe can enable consumers to access Green Dot’s more than 90,000 retail locations nationwide. To pay bills at participating Walmart stores, customers simply show an associate at the Money Services desk or Customer Service desk the scannable code on their smartphone, pay with cash and collect a receipt that confirms the payment is completed. Funds are then transferred to the biller electronically through a single consolidated settlement.”

“When Fiserv paid $4.4 billion to acquire CheckFree in 2007, ACH-based bill payment through banks’ web portals was expanding, with 21 of the top 25 banks in the U.S. using CheckFree’s services. It happened to be the same year Apple introduced the iPhone, which would gradually undermine bank-based bill payments by enabling consumers to pay bills directly through mobile apps using all types of payments, including cards. Fewer than 25% of consumers now pay bills through their banks’ websites, down from about 40% more than a decade ago, and the pandemic has only accelerated that shift as more consumers got help simplifying bill payments through third-party providers and fintechs, according to data from Aite Group.”

“Clik2pay, Canada’s first seamless, near-real-time bill payments service launched today at the Payments Canada SUMMIT , together on stage with some of Canada’s leading companies . Leveraging the trusted Interac e-Transfer service and offered through Peoples Trust Company , part of People’s Group, the innovative service lets customers easily pay bills and invoices from their bank account by text, e-mail or QR code.  Clik2pay provides an alternative to expensive options like credit card and cheque, and legacy systems such as the existing bill pay network and pre-authorized debits.”

“doxo , the innovative, all-in-one web and mobile bill pay service, today announced that it has expanded the benefits of its simple, secure bill pay experience by introducing free bill payments to more than 100,000 billers across the U.S. from a linked account to any of more than 11,000 bank and credit unions . The doxo app provides users a secure, consistent way to organize and pay all their bills with a single login, on any device, using any payment method they need—bank account, credit card, debit card, or Apple Pay . Now, when consumers link their bank account to their doxo account, they can not only manage due dates and track their real time bank balance, but they can eliminate the online transaction fees often encountered when paying certain types of bills.”

“Among the hardships some consumers are bearing these days, rent payments can loom large. This week, a housing-payments startup called Xspaced and payments provider Dwolla Inc. launched a feature that allows tenants to split rent payments into anywhere from two to four installments each month without accruing interest. Landlords still get paid monthly with the new feature, which Oakland, Calif.-based Xspaced likens to a “ subscription plan.””