Checkfree

Esther J. Pigg, VP Product Mgmt.
Hayden Reed, VP Payment Solutions
4411 East Jones Bridge Road
Norcross, GA 30092
(770) 441-3387
www.checkfree.com

Electronic Bill Payment Volume: 10 million payments last month across 2.6 million consumer accounts for an average of 3.8 bills per customer per month; more than 5 million, or 50%, were electronic. That percentage is expected to improve substantially as all clients migrate to its new system by year-end.

Claim to Fame: Invented the electronic bill pay industry; still maintain the dominant position, and are expected to open a bill pay center with Yahoo!

Status Report:

•  In an extremely favorable investment analysis recently published by Deutsche Bank Securities, it was estimated that Checkfree was poised to capture 90% of the bill pay business from a total market size of 12 to 19 million bill pay users by 2004.
•  One cloud on the horizon, the lawsuit filed by minority owner Intuit (which owns a 19.1% stake) seeks to keep Checkfree from cutting deals with portals other than Yahoo!
•  Earlier this year, the company successfully moved 16 banks to its new Genesys system.
•  Checkfree is two years into a
  10-year deal with Integrion that included taking over the bill payment functions previously performed by Visa Interactive.
•  Checkfree now processes payments for more than 350 financial institutions, including nine of the country’s top 10 banks. The financial institutions have a combined total of more than 150 million checking and savings accounts.
•  The company launched a non-profit entity called the Electronic Banking Association with a Web site that promotes electronic banking, bill presentment, and Internet payments in general at www.e-banking.com It includes a “find your financial institution” search function and has been logging more than 1,000 visitors a day, with nearly 30% of clicking through to an individual financial institution.

Bill Presentment Plans:

 Checkfree has maintained its front-runner position as it moves to electronic bill presentment, inking deals with 43 of the nation’s top 100 billers. Most are in small-scale pilot stage. Eighteen billers are currently presenting bills at Checkfree’s site.

 AT&T is scheduled to implement in early 2000.

•  Partners include: Bell & Howell, BlueGill, eDocs, EDS, Intuit, Just in Time, Mobius, Oracle, and Total Systems Service.

• Checkfree E-Bill 2.0, will launch this summer. It’s a clever hybrid approach that combines the user-friendly feature of single enrollment and login with the biller-friendly option of sending users directly into the biller’s Web site during the session using so-called “customer magnets” embedded in the bill notification. Billers can turn the magnets on or off for each customer each month.
   
•  The new product also allows billers to change billing amounts during the payment session. For example, utilities could allow customers to enter their own meter readings, then recalculate the amount owed, prior to payment being authorized.
   
•  E-Bills 2.0 also allows billers to migrate from consolidator models to direct billing, if desired.