PB readies online bill-paying system for Q4 launch

Pitney Bowes Inc. is aiming for a fourth-quarter U.S. launch of its Volly online bill payment system, with the open question lingering on whether the service will scale up rapidly amid myriad options for consumers.
Stamford-based Pitney Bowes unveiled Volly last year as a single platform for consumers to pay bills and view company communications, including catalogs and coupons. Many of Volly”™s features are available via varying ecommerce channels, however, and it remains to be seen whether a company that is an acknowledged expert in business-to-business communications will have the pulse of consumers. Rival Zumbox Inc. has a head start, launching this month its own iPad application for a digital “mailbox” to handle billing and other functions.
For its part, Pitney Bowes is relying on billers and other third parties to promote the service as a bridge to building better customer relationships.
“Most of the studies we”™ve seen suggest that consumers only trust banks or ”¦ financial institutions with money decisions,” said Barclays analyst Hale Holden, “Pitney Bowes doesn”™t really have a ”¦consumer brand and Volly certainly doesn”™t have a consumer brand.”
In a conference call, CFO Michael Monahan acknowledged Volly represents “a slower build,” but expressed confidence the service will be embraced by companies and by extension their customers.
“We felt it”™s very important that those brands play a part in validating Volly with the customers,” Monahan said. “There”™s a value proposition, both for them as well as for the consumers themselves, to have a point of aggregation of their bills, statements and other account information.”
In April, Pitney Bowes announced the Australia Post is the first national postal service to incorporate Volly into its digital offerings, with a spokesperson not saying whether Pitney Bowes is seeking a similar arrangement with the U.S. Postal Service.
To pay for Volly”™s expansion and other growth-minded investments under CEO Murray Martin, Pitney Bowes indicated it is expanding its “productivity initiatives,” without specifying whether that could result in a new round of job cuts. Pitney Bowes pared its payroll by 2,000 jobs last year, leaving it with a workforce of 29,700 people worldwide and 20,100 in the United States.
Pitney Bowes reported an 11 percent increase in Martin”™s compensation last year to $9.2 million, including estimates for stock and options that vest in future years based on the company”™s performance going forward.
Volly is one element Pitney Bowes is counting on for renewed growth. First-quarter sales drooped below $1.3 billion in the first quarter, down 5 percent from a year ago, though Pitney Bowes nearly doubled profits to $159 million.
Martin said some orders may have been delayed due to the “Drupa effect” of prospective customers wanting to attend May”™s Drupa print technologies convention, held every four years in Dusseldorf, Germany.
“We didn”™t really see anything there in lost business ”“ it was really more of deferral, and it sort of reminds us of a number of years ago we had that and then it came back afterwards,” Martin said. “You see in Europe with the situation there that there are delays and then some delays again in the financial services sector in the U.S.”