Last week, Visa USA redesigned its direct bill-pay area using Billeo's technology to power biller search and facilitate direct payments via credit card. It is a major coup for the fledgling direct bill-pay solutions provider Billeo, which earned an Online Banking Report Best of the Web last year for its innovative bill-pay toolbar (OBR 116/117).

The implementation at Visa bears careful review. It wisely uses biller search to engage users (see inset), then prompts them to save their personal biller list using Billeo. After registering, users download and install the toolbar directly into their browser, then input credit card information to facilitate payments. After the initial setup, users can pay select bills directly from the toolbar using the saved credit card and biller info.

Next week, we'll look at Visa's implementation in more detail and share insights from our conversation with Billeo founder, Murali Subbarao. In the meantime, you might want to give it a spin yourself at Visa's bill-pay site, <usa.visa.com/personal/using_visa/pay_bills_with_visa/> (click on screenshot right for a closer look).

Previous articles:

• NetBanker posts on Billeo
• Online Banking Report #85, Grabbing Desktop Mindshare: Private-branded browser extensions can make online services easier to use

-JB