Punjab State Electricity brings e-billing

The Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) has opened its e-billing facility, facilitating its consumers by allowing them to pay for their electricity bills online, says The Times of India.

PSEB started the scheme on a trial basis with the department accounting for over 50 transactions per day.

To draw benefit from the scheme, consumers set up an account where transactions take place. The customer can pay through credit, debit or Internet banking. Following the payment, consumers can get printouts of receipts for records.

The Senate Commerce Committee is querying 16 companies that conduct sales over the Internet about their business relationships with three marketing companies that are under investigation by the panel, reports CNNMoney.

In letters sent last week to the likes of 1-800-FLOWERS.com, Orbitz Worldwide, and priceline.com, committee chairman John D Rockefeller asked whether the companies use a "data pass" process to transfer their customers' billing information to one of the three marketing companies.

For the better part of the year, the committee has been investigating marketing practices at Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion Group. The most recent set of letters went to companies that allow at least one of those firms to advertise on their Web sites. The 16 companies receiving the letters represent a sampling of Web companies that could be sharing customers' billing information with third-party marketing firms, according to committee aides.

While millions of online shoppers will turn to comparison shopping engines before making a purchase this holiday season, many visitors to these sites will be botnets looking to steal money from merchants, according to Reuters.

To help ensure shoppers are qualified before passing them on to merchant partners, Click Forensics has unveiled a new online audience verification platform at the ad:tech New York conference.

It says comparison shopping engines and other content aggregators can use it to measure the quality of site visitors and their likelihood to make a purchase. The technology also allows comparison shopping engines to match the revenue they receive from merchants to the investments they make in SEM campaigns in order to maximise profits.