Striata and Payments Gateway Partner to Securely Deliver Property Tax Bills Electronically

Online, April 18, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Payments Gateway and Striata are proud to announce their new partnership to offer an enhanced email billing solution. Payments Gateway provides a flexible, reliable and cost effective tool for automating and managing payment processing functions for thousands of organizations throughout North America. The addition of Striata Email Billing and Striata Secure Document Delivery, enables Payments Gateway to offer a powerful electronic presentment solution to compliment its robust and mature payments capability. As a result, the partnership has won its first client, Allegheny County.

Allegheny County: Department of the Treasurer, (Pennsylvania, USA) selected the Striata - Payments Gateway partnership to securely deliver residential property tax bills via email. Allegheny County customers now have the opportunity to receive their Email Bills directly into verified email inboxes. Bills can also be viewed on any email cabable mobile device such as the BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad etc.

"I am pleased to offer this valuable service the county residents that will help reduce our carbon footprint, save our environment and make Allegheny County a truly Greener government," says Treasurer John Weinstein. " This convenient, efficient and environmentally friendly billing option and payment service will also reduce the overall cost of county government."

Garin Toren, Striata Chief Operating Officer says "Payments Gateway is an ideal Striata partner. Their core payments processing strengths, in conjunction with Striata's unique email delivery solutions, create a customer experience that will be hard to match in this geography. Our immediate success with Allegheny County bodes very well for our future together."

By partnering with electronic payment providers, Striata enables its proprietary BillPay solution. The solution sets being incorporated into this partnership include: Striata Email Billing, Striata Secure Document Delivery, Striata BillPay, Striata eConsent, Striata Email Authentication and Striata Email Collection Services. Payments Gateway is geared to become a significant reseller of Striata's products and services

"We're very excited to add Striata's unique bill presentment solutions to our broad array of payment processing solutions," says Jeff Thorness, Payments Gateway Chief Executive Officer.

"By enabling our payment processing capabilities directly within Striata's bill presentment solutions, we can provide our joint customers with a solution that can significantly improve their cash flow."

Striata securely delivers the email bill with payment functionality embedded directly within the bill itself, thus allowing simple, secure payment with just a single click, all without the need to link back to any website. This results in radical improvement in time to pay.

"Striata utility, insurance, telco and government clients in North America have all seen Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) reductions in excess of 30% and in many cases as high as 55%. One of our large utility clients in Colorado recently saw payment speed reduced from 44 days, on average through paper billing and their website, to 9 days with its Striata solution," says Toren.

In addition to dramatically faster payments, a critical result of delivering bills and statements via email is paper turn off. The Striata eConsent process allows billers to gain paper suppression consent from their consumers, with just one simple click from within the body of an authenticated email. In addition, Striata adoption specialists will work with the Payments Gateway team to drive fast, cost efficient and accurate email address collection with their clients.

"Turning off the physical mailing and gaining the associated cost savings, in a way that drives maximum customer satisfaction is a key goal for all billers in 2011. Striata and Payments Gateway's unique solution set, which speeds up clients' payment processes and increases annual paper suppression, just cannot be beat in the marketplace today," concludes Toren.