Little things can add up, in this case to $720 million ayear.

NACHA said its 2012 Exceptions Benchmarking Study shows thatwhile just 0.58% – or about one in 200 – bill payments were notable to be posted accurately upon receipt by billers in 2011, thatadded up to 130 million payments.

And handling those exceptions costs the industry about $720million annually, NACHA, the Electronics Payment Association said. NACHA'sCouncil for Electronic Billing and Payment said the 2012 exceptionrate was up from the 0.4% recorded in the previous study in2007.

Missing or invalid consumer account numbers are the leadingcause of exceptions for billers, the CEBP said. Processingdifferences top the list for processors, the council said.

A lack of standard procedures for dealing with incorrect accountnumbers entered by consumers was one problem cited in the report,which noted that some processors notify the consumers, while otherstry to edit the number and others send a paper check.

“Although the percentage of exceptions may appearinconsequential, volume is high, and the impact on billers,processors, financial institutions, small businesses, and evenconsumers is significant,” said Kathy Romano, director of PaymentProcessing for Verizon's landline customer business and member ofCEBP.

“Exceptions require someone to manually resolve issues, creatingadditional expense for corporations and processingorganizations. More importantly, consumers' payments will bedelayed in processing, sometimes resulting in late fees or evenservice impacts,” Romano said.

“In order to help reduce the number of bill payment exceptions,sharing information, standardizing processes, and educatingconsumers is critical,” the report said.

The report documents volume, causes and costs of bill paymentexceptions across several payment channels and is availableonline.