An Post has announced a new service, www.billpay.ie, which allows users to view and pay many of their bills online free of charge. The company will also spend £5 million upgrading the post office network.
The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, said she had asked An Post to allocate £5 million from the sale of Postgem/ IOL towards improving the network.
Ms O'Rourke said she would be examining the possibility of seeking matching Exchequer funding for the initiative.
An Post said the money would be used to further upgrade the technology in existing offices which are online and examine the viability of extending it to other post offices. At present, 1,000 offices are online.
The company will examine whether the volume of business in post offices justifies investing in new technology for them.
The new online bill-paying service, which allows for the payment of 65 different bills over the Internet, enables users to both see and pay their bills online or pay the bills they receive through the post, online.
Users of billpay will have the option of receiving an e-mail or SMS text message to their mobile phone to inform them that one of their bills has been delivered to the billpay site.
Eircom, Esat Digifone, Irish Multichannel Spirit Telecom and Swiftcall have agreed to offer their customers the option of having their bills sent electronically to billpay.ie.
Bills can be paid by credit card, laser card or directly from a bank account by credit transfer.
Mr Terry Reynolds, group director for strategy said the consolidated model for paying bills would reduce bill delivery and payment costs.
Mr Reynolds said the company was putting in place the infrastructure to conduct e-commerce securely and would build on the trust it had built up with customers over the years.
An Amarach Consulting survey, commissioned by An Post, showed that 59 per cent of all current bill payers said they would probably or definitely use the service.
The research also showed that 25 per cent of those surveyed said they would be encouraged to start using the Internet in the next year to use such a bill paying service.
An Post also introduced two new Internet security products. "Sitewatch", a server security certificate mark for websites in conjunction with RITS, will be given to sites which have been audited for security.
The second product is a new digital certification service or digital passport for business and consumers called "PostCert".
PostCert will allow people to sign e-mails and verify other people's identities on the Internet.
