Dial-a-Payment

Telephone users have long been accustomed to getting time signals, weather reports, political spiels and horoscopes just by dialing a certain number.

Now a subsidiary of Seattle-First National Bank has figured out a way to permit account holders to let their fingers do the walking through their bank accounts. For the past month, bank customers who have touch-tonal telephones have been able to use them to pay many of their bills, bypassing the bother of writing out checks, addressing envelopes and licking stamps.

The "In-Touch" system is made possible because the bank subsidiary's computer can interpret touch telephone tones as commands--something that cannot be done with rotary-dial telephones. By pressing a combination of numbers, the customer can transfer funds from his account to the accounts of cooperating businesses with which the customer deals.

The system is somewhat complicated. Using his home or office phone, the customer must first punch a seven-digit number to get access to the computer, then enter his personal identification number, then another code number for the bill-payment service, then a fourth code number for the company to receive the payment, then a fifth number to indicate the amount of the transaction (all numbers are kept secret between the bank and the telephone users). A computer-simulated "voice" confirms each step of the transaction over the phone, so that a customer runs no great risk of paying somebody else's bill by punching the wrong numbers.

Tax Bill. Bill payment is only one service that the touch telephone user can command from the computer. By entering different combinations of numbers, an account holder can have the computer calculate twice-monthly and year-to-date totals for his household expenses; check his addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in figuring out accounts; send him biweekly reminders of important dates coming up; or even figure out his estimated federal income tax and send him, between Jan.

15 and April 1, a printout of itemized deductions that can be attached to his 1040 form. The monthly charge is $6.50 for the first 100 minutes of computer time--enough to handle 300 transactions at an average of 20 seconds each.

Some 400 customers are using the In-Touch service, and Seattle-First National has received more than 1,500 inquiries from potential additional customers. One thing that the system cannot guarantee to prevent is an overenthusiastic customer's directing the computer to pay more bills than he has money in the bank to cover. In order to solve that problem, presumably, the customer would have to resort to Dial-a-Prayer.

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