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I see an opportunity for a consolidated billing service. Right now, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and all the others send separate bills. What if there were a
by chiph 13y ago
I see an opportunity for a consolidated billing service. Right now, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and all the others send separate bills. What if there were a central service so people only get one bill, and have an opportunity to create their own bundle of streaming services?
- sliverstorm 13y agoHow on earth will you monetize that? Because I'm sure as shit not going to pay extra just to consolidate my bills.
- jjoonathan 13y agoThe local banks have spent enough money over the years advertising their "automatic bill pay" schemes that somebody must see value in them. Good luck beating them at that game, though. They've been at it for at least a decade.
- sliverstorm 13y ago"Automatic bill pay" with my bank does have some value! But they give it to me for free, as a perk to attract my business. Much like free checking, which banks also advertise.
- brm 13y agoAd space on the bill for movies and tv shows that are coming soon? Not great, but probably more effective than a billboard on Santa Monica...
- chiph 13y agoYou go to them and say "You can outsource your billing department to us for less than you're paying now."
- nitrogen 13y agoYou already pay 1-3% extra to the credit card processor; a bill consolidation service could take a cut of that (perhaps by acting as a credit card themselves) without affecting the price you see.
- sliverstorm 13y agoCredit card company would have no interest in that kind of deal though, I would think.
- nitrogen 13y agoI recently heard about a startup that automatically routes purchases to the user's credit card that would give the best rewards for that category of purchase. They somehow act as an intermediary in the card processing chain, so the transactions still show up on the final destination as originating from the merchant, not the routing service. I don't recall the name, but it seems plausible that a bill consolidation service could do something similar at a similar layer of the payment processing infrastructure, collect their percentage, and be profitable doing it.
- sliverstorm 13y agoHmm. Now I want to know what that startup is, so I can use it.
- JoshTriplett 13y agoThose services don't have a meaningful "bill" to consolidate. All of those services just show up as a line on a credit card statement, and don't send a paper bill. There's no bill to pay attention to unless the charge on the credit card statement looks wrong.
- MichaelGG 13y agoSo when I have a problem with Amazon, I now contact a third party to sort out my billing? Or when I dispute something with Hulu, my Netflix account breaks? Anyways, I don't think I've ever received a "bill" from any of them. My CC gets charged and that's that. As far as that goes, a central service already exists: Amazon Payments, PayPal, etc.