TALLINN - The freshest data in Estonia suggests that roughly a quarter-million bills, or 9 percent of the 2.7 million bills sent monthly to private individuals, are electronic.
This compares sharply with last October, when e-bills made up 6 percent of all bills.
Mait Sooaru, managing director of Itella, a company that operates the electronic settlement environment www.arved.ee, said that Itella currently sends approximately 140,000 e-bills a month, and in June this accounted for 9.1 percent of all bills sent out by the company. Itella handles about 40 percent of all bills in Estonia.
According to Sooaru, Estonia is one of the leaders in Europe in terms of electronic billing. "Also Norway, Germany, Iceland, Finland and Sweden boast above-average penetration. The rest of the countries lag far behind Estonia," he said.
Itella, part of Finland's Suomen Posti concern, also operates in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the three Baltic states.
Itella's Estonian branch posted sales of 103.4 million kroons (6.6 million euros) and earned a profit of 10.2 million kroons in 2005.
