iPhone App for mobile utilities payments gains energy

Talk about making it easy to pay a bill. California’s Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), lets people pay online, by mail, by phone, by automatic deduction, in person, and soon, by iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, as well.  PG&E just inked a deal with TIO Networks Corp. to pilot a mobile bill-payment service this summer.

As reported in a TIO TIO press release (with additional coverage by American Banker ), once the pilot launches, millions of PG&E customers in Northern and Central California will be able to download a free TIO/PG&E application posted on iTune’s App Store.

The real-time payment application will work on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. To use the application, customers will simply type in their mobile-phone number, their Pacific Gas & Electric account number and a method of payment, such as a credit card, debit card or bank account.

For the expedited payment service, Tio will charge customers $3.45 for each payment made with an iPhone – not that out of line for what banks charge online bill-pay customers for the “convenience” of making an expedited or rush payments. PG&E expects the service to be popular, and predicts upwards of 100,000 customers will pay bills through this new service.

Ahead, subsequent variations of the application could layer in other payment options, such as PayPal or other electronic payment systems.

TIO also is reported to be developing payment applications for Blackberry and Android phones.

What does this all boil down to? As more and more users start managing their financial lives using smart phones, they will demand different payment options at different times. And with that, mobile payments clearly is gaining energy.