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Household bill payments now total $2.75 trillion per year in the United States, accounting for 21% of all spending by U.S. consumers, according to a report released Thursday by doxo Inc., a provider of digital billing and payment services. The Seattle-based company’s research looks at bill payments via bank accounts as well as on credit and debit cards, but excludes such spending as employer-paid portions of consumers’ insurance premiums.
On average, each U.S. consumer spends more than $21,000 annually on bill payments, according to doxo’s “2020 US Bill Pay Market Size & Category Breakout” report, which looked at household payments across 30,000 Zip Codes and 45,000 types of service to size the U.S. bill-pay market.
Unsurprisingly, mortgage payments top the list of bill payments by dollar volume, at $782 billion, well ahead of rent ($537 billion) and auto-loan payments ($421 billion). But expenses for mobile-phone service ($127 billion) and cable and Internet service ($140 billion) loom large, ranking seventh and sixth.
When compared to average household income, bill payments account for about one-third of what consumers earn, “a sizable portion of income by any measure,” the report says.
Founded in 2008, doxo claims to support the “largest bill-pay directory” in the United States. Its technology supports payments on a variety of devices for 4 million users paying bills from more than 75,000 businesses. The user base has grown by more than 70% over the past year, according to the company.
