Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment System

Question: Discuss about the Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment System. Answer: EBP Systems and EBPP Systems Banking industry has witnessed a major revolution in the banking activities with the introduction of internet and web based operations in the field. Internet based banking has changed the way and practices related to the traditional banking methods. It is thus essential to understand the operations of each of the internet based banking concept to form a detailed plan to implement the same (Plymouth, 2016). EBP Systems stand from Electronic Based Payment Systems which enable the customer to make the bill payments from any geographical location through the use of electronic methods of bill payment. These systems make use of information systems and technology to set-up electronic payment gateways to allow the account holder to make financial transactions electronically (shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in, 2016). EBPP Systems that is Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment is advancement over the EBP systems. EBPP Systems enable the end user to create, view, deliver and pay the bills over the Internet. There was a time when the bills were sent with the help of postal services and took a lot of time in the entire process of sending, receiving and paying. The same has been overcome with the help of EBPP as it allows instant presentation of the invoice or the bills for the customer to take a look at and pay thereafter. The electronic bill presentment is further divided in to two mechanisms as Pull and Push. The push method sends the electronic bill over the registered email id of the customer. Pull method on the other hand posts the same on a secure web site that demands user authentication (euro.ecom.cmu.edu, 2016). EBPP System and its operations (Kolar, 2016) Similarities between EBP and EBPP Systems There are a number of similarities between the EBP and EBPP Systems as latter is an advancement over the former. Both of these systems have been designed with the same objective of allowing the customers to make use of internet banking for the activities associated with the bill payments. The backbone behind these systems is also the same that is IT. Information Technology has enabled these systems to flourish and establish themselves as the most demanded bill payment solutions in the market at the present era. The basic architecture that is followed in the design, development and implementation of these bill payment and presentment systems is also similar in nature as the actors that are involved in the same are customer, customers bank, merchant, payment gateway and network. Differences between EBP and EBPP Systems There are also a few differences between EBP and EBPP Systems. EBP Systems allow the customer that is the account holders only with the ability to make the payment for their bills through an online medium. EBPP Systems on the other hand go a step further and allow the customer to view and download the detailed invoice as well. EBPP Systems have replaced the paper based invoices and provide a comfortable solution to take a look at the e-invoices. Scheduling of the same to automatically receive them on the e-mail address is also provided through EBPP Systems. In the given scenario, university offers courses to students. Each student is identified uniquely by student number. One student can study one or more courses and one course can be taken up by zero or more students. This association results in mapping table. The students are graded on each course by course attribute of the mapping table. Each course has unique identifier course number. Course has additional attributes like course title. Each course can be taught by one and only one instructor. Instructor has an unique identifier identifier_number. Other attributes of instructor include instructor name and location. More than one instructor can have same name. An instructor teaches one or more courses. The performance of student on particular course is measured by grade attribute. In ERD diagram, many to many relations have been broken down in 3NF form by forming a new table i.e. table with attributes: student_number, course_number and grade. Similarly, one to many relation where one instructor teaches one or more courses is depicted by table having attributes: course_number, course_title and instructor_number. Data flow diagram depicts the functions that the system should perform and data which is being required by these functions. The external and internal entities of a system depend on the role being played by them. The system of organization has some entities which transforms data within the system of an organization. There can be a system within an organization where some entities receive and send data to the system but are part of the organization and internal to it. In this respect, the colleague is correct only to an extent but not completely as the external and internal entities are not defined as per the organization but the system for which they are being defined. (Carrington, Battersby and Howitt, 1975) The colleague is wrong with the given statement. External entity of the system are those entities which either receive or send the data but do not manipulate it and internal entities are those entities which transforms data received from sources and outputs, if required, data. The process of transformation is not known from the DFD diagram but what actually been sent/received by external entity is clearly defined in the diagram. These internal entities include persons, places and things. In the given DFD diagram, customer sends cash to the system which is received by sales clerk then sales clerk sends this cash along with register tape to the cashier. Here, customer is the external entity as it only sends the data and sales clerk is the internal entity which receives the data and transforms it and sends it to next internal entity which also transforms the data (Gelinas, Sutton and Oram, 1999). References Carrington, A., Battersby, G. and Howitt, G., 1975.Accounting, an information system. Christchurch, N.Z.: Whitcombe and Tombs. euro.ecom.cmu.edu, (2016). Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment. [online] Available at: https://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/resources/elibrary/epay/EBPP.pdf [Accessed 2 Aug. 2016]. Gelinas, U., Sutton, S. and Oram, A., 1999.Accounting information systems. Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western College Pub. Kolar, P. (2016). CloudTeq.eu s.r.o.. [online] Cloudteq.eu. Available at: https://www.cloudteq.eu/co-je-ebpp_en.php [Accessed 2 Aug. 2016]. Plymouth, K. (2016). Bill Payment Trends: Major Shifts in Consumer Behavior Require Comprehensive Planning. [online] Available at: https://www.firstdata.com/downloads/thought-leadership/fd_billpaymenttrends_whitepaper.pdf [Accessed 2 Aug. 2016]. shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in, (2016). Conceptual Framework - Banking. [online] Available at: https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/31679/8/08_chapter%201.pdf [Accessed 2 Aug. 2016].