Manilla Starts Hammering Another Nail in the Mail’s Coffin
Manilla, the promised online bill-paying start-up incubated for almost two years and backed by the old Hearst media empire, the widgetry that will compete with Zumbox, Doxo and Pitney Bowes’ unseen Volly, went into a closed beta last week offering consumers who sign up for it a free personal account to manage their bills, travel rewards and subscriptions.
It says they won’t have to remember multiple passwords.
It automatically links users to their accounts so they can pay bills, book travel, renew subscriptions. It claims users can access their existing accounts with nearly all the national and major regional household brands including Citi Cards and Comcast Cable.
That means Manilla’s technology overcomes a major hurdle faced by its competitors: it works whether or not Manilla has a formal relationship with the biller.
Over time, Manilla means to support all categories of business relationships for which a customer has an account relationship.
Its simple, clean dashboard gives users an automated, organized view of their account information, including reminders to pay bills, and free lifetime storage of all their statements, notices, offers and bills, downloadable as PDFs. The theory is that the aggregation of this stuff is better than ordinary e-mail although users can still opt for e-mail and SMS notices of impeding bills.
The start-up repeats what its rivals have already said about helping businesses wean customers off of paper mail to slash their mailing costs and increase customer engagement.
And like its rivals, Manilla will charge billers for the customers that go paperless.
At stake are the nearly 48 billion account notices, statements, offers and bills businesses put in the US mail a year, according to recent USPS statistics, worth about $35 billion in postage. Paper, printing and labor are added costs businesses would like to dispense with.
Manilla, named for the folders used to stuff papers in, says only 11% of consumers have gone paperless so far. Its first two marketing partners, Comcast and Citibank, are supposed to have 100 million US households as customers.
The New York-based start-up made its debut at the chi-chi Demo Spring conference for hand-selected (or well-connected) emerging technologies. E-Trade, Leapfrog, Salesforce.com, Java and TiVo launched at Demo. There’s a tape of Manilla’s presentation at www.demo.com/alumni/demo2011/234757.html.
The start-up is being run by George Kliavkoff, who also had a hand in developing Hulu and was its first CEO. He has been chief digital officer of NBC Universal and general manager of business development at RealNetworks.
Hearst sends out hundreds of millions of pieces a mail a year on behalf of its own publications and 60% of American magazines so it’s got a dog in the race.
See www.manilla.com.
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