Dive Brief:

• InComm Payments, a payments tech company, has partnered with Doxo, a provider of bill payment services, to allow customers to pay their household bills with cash at some 60,000 retail locations across the U.S., the companies announced Thursday. 
• The partnership will enable Doxo account holders to use InComm’s retailer network relationships to pay their bills at chains that include Dollar General, Family Dollar and select 7-Eleven stores. Doxo customers will be able to access the service in "coming months," the announcement said. A Doxo spokesperson declined to provide more specific timing.
• Using their Doxo account, consumers will be able to pay their bills in cash by scanning a barcode with their Doxo’s mobile app at the register of participating retailers, according to the press release. Billers in Doxo's directory include those that provide insurance, internet, credit card, utility and other services.

Dive Insight:

In their announcement, Atlanta-based InComm and Seattle-based Doxo noted the prevalence of bills paid by U.S. consumers in cash. Specifically, they said about 12% of bills, or nearly 1.9 billion bills paid annually by U.S. households, are paid in cash, citing the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. 

For Doxo, tapping into InComm’s retail network expands its reach to consumers and billers, offers more cash-pay locations for its account holders, and lets billers offer a new way to pay. Meanwhile, InComm adds Doxo as a customer for its payments services.  

"These cash payments require more office locations and processing costs than digital payments," the release said. "Doxo's cash pay capability, leveraging InComm Payments' nationwide retail network, now adds hundreds or thousands of cash-pay locations within the service territory of billers on doxo's network, while still allowing the biller to receive the payment digitally."

The companies are creating the new cash services, often used by underbanked and unbanked U.S. consumers, at a time of national focus on extending financial services to such consumers.

“Our cash payment network is perfectly aligned with doxo’s vision of empowering consumers to improve their financial lives, and in this instance providing their users with a simple and convenient experience for making cash payments to household billers in an extensive network of retail locations across the United States,” Tim Richardson, senior vice president of business development at InComm Payments, said in a statement. 

As more payment platforms leverage retailers’ storefronts, InComm and Doxo’s partnership follows in the footsteps of other recent collaborations between payments companies and retailers.

Walmart teamed up in June with bill payment startup PayNearMe and fintech company Green Dot to let customers pay their bills with cash across 4,000 store locations beginning this month.

CVS in August 2020 announced that it would display PayPal and Venmo QR codes at its checkouts to let shoppers pay for purchases using their stored debit cards, credit cards, PayPal or Venmo funds, and PayPal or Venmo Rewards. 

Besides its deal with Doxo, InComm recently tried to capture consumers seeking gift cards. The company teamed with Mastercard in November to launch MastercardGiftCard.com, which lets consumers send Mastercard gift cards through physical mail or email. In April, InComm debuted TheGiftCardShop.com, a hub for sending gift cards from various merchants to loved ones via email.