BROOKFIELD, Wis. — For the second year in a row, American consumers who go online now pay more bills online than they do by paper check, according to an annual poll sponsored by CheckFree.

And about three-fourths of American households, about 63.1 million of them, pay bills that way now, according to the survey of 3,031 online households by Harris Interactive.

The survey found that an estimated 31 million households are using online banking Web sites to pay bills, 47.9 million households are using biller Web sites and 16 million are using both to receive and pay bills.

Online bill payments made at both bank and biller Web sites rose to 42% of the total volume of household bill payments made each month, up from 39% in the 2007 survey. That compares to 14% in the first survey in 2002, according to CheckFree, an electronic payment services provider that's now a part of Fiserv.