Paperless Payphone: Doxo Now Lets You Receive & Pay Bills From Your Mobile Device

Since launching in mid-2011, doxo has been on a mission to make your life paperless. With its “digital filing cabinet” software, the Seattle-based startup aims to create a single place for users to manage their bills, be they phone, cable, or credit card.

Of course, the world is quickly going mobile, and payment solutions are going right along with it. So, in an effort to close the loop between web and mobile services, Doxo is today launching a new mobile payment and management solution, along with a new Android app, to finally allow users to both receive and pay bills from their mobile devices.

Doxo’s new Android app complements the updated iOS app the startup launched last summer so that the pair of apps now allow users to take advantage of mobile bill payment and management on top of its flagship “digital file cabinet” and secure backup offerings.

Both apps now include the startup’s new so-called “doxoPAY,” a feature that allows users to receive and pay bills with one account and one password from a single app. This means that you no longer have to set up separate usernames and access credentials to manage payment accounts across multiple websites, instead, you can simply create a free Doxo account to start organizing your household accounts and docs, connecting with service providers that include AT&T, Sprint, Puget Sound Energy, and Sound Community Bank — to name a few.

The startup is currently hard at work on expanding this list, signing up as many banks, public utilities, and major phone and cable carriers as it can. Obviously, while the value proposition is evident, for Doxo to truly become your default digital file cabinet and bill payment solution, it has to be integrated with all the providers you’re using. That’s half the battle, and it still has a ways to go there.

That being said, Doxo has the potential to significantly mitigate a huge pain in the ass for consumers. For most people, whether you receive bills electronically or in good old paper form, payment is a three step process: Read the bill when and wherever you receive it, open it again when you’re ready to pay, and then file through another system. Doxo’s mobile payment solution condenses that down to a single step by embedding payment options in the bill itself.

Users simply connect with their providers to pay bills, directly on Doxo Mobile, receiving bills from those providers while uploading documents and bills from home or on the go, with the added benefit of being able to manage, upload, and organize account information, important documents, and bills by account. Plus, you can use the apps to snap photos and upload bills and receipts into Doxo’s digital filing cabinet, while automatically backing up those critical documents to their hard drive or cloud providers like Box.com and Dropbox.

On the flip side, for businesses, Doxo is trying to eliminate the hurdles most often cited by consumers in regard to going paperless. Not only that, but it can streamline and reduce the additional costs inherent to most customer-provider interaction by speeding collection, cutting credit card fees (like overdue payments), and make it easy to go paperless. Which, for businesses, can mean eliminating the need for custom software — or having to develop their own standalone app.

According to Doxo CEO Steve Shivers, this translates to businesses saving an average of 80 percent on the cost of mailing documents, bills, and accepting payments. And, of course, the best part is that, because Doxo saves businesses money on paper, its mobile apps are free for the consumer — and available in the App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store.

Founded in 2008, Doxo seemed to miss the memo on the whole “ship or die” approach, taking its sweet time to go to market, testing and developing for over two years before finally coming out of invite-only beta last summer. Better safe (and market ready) than sorry. Of course, it also helps one’s slow and steady method when there’s $15 million in venture funding from Sigma Partners, Mohr Davidow, and Jeff Bezos to fall back on.

For more, check out Doxo at home here.