www.paytrust.com

On Nov. 8, PayTrust became the first financial services company to offer financial statement aggregation (see VerticalOne, OBR 8/99).

Statement retrieval has been programmed for just three banks so far, but the company’s goal is to provide statement information from the banks of 50% of its user base by year-end.

PayTrust (Princeton, NJ), the only one of three scan-and-pay providers yet to receive an OBR Best of the Web designation, picks up the award by being the first financial services company to provide Web-based statement aggregation (see also CyberBills OBR 3/99; PayMyBills, OBR 6/99).

The service dubbed Smart-Balance, automatically retrieves statement information from
users’ bank and brokerage accounts and displays it on the PayTrust site. It’s free to users
of PayTrust’s $7.95/mo bill management service. For more on this promising technology, refer to our analysis of VerticalOne, now a division of S1 (OBR 8/98; OBR 9/99).

How it Works

•  User registers bank account numbers, usernames, and passwords with PayTrust (the bank must support Web-based account access).
•  After logging in to the PayTrust site, user selects My Bank from the left-hand navigation bar (shown at left, for a full screenshot).
•  User selects which bank or brokerage account they wish to view using the drop-down box in the upper right-hand corner.
•  User presses the “money bag” icon in the upper right-hand corner (see screenshot next page) to retrieve new information from their bank account.
•  PayTrust logs the user in to their bank account and downloads account information onto the PayTrust server for convenient viewing (screenshot next page).
•  The program automatically subtracts any pending PayTrust transactions from the bank balance to derive the SmartBalance.

Other Company News (see OBR 6/99, 9/99) since its July launch:

•  Total registered user base has jumped to 20,000 (Nov. 15) compared to 14,000 reported by the WSJ a month ago (Oct. 18). Most are on their 90-day free trial period, so the ultimate adoption rate is yet to be seen. The company won’t comment specifically on the number of paying users other than to say they’ve processed about 50,000 bills. Assuming four bills per month per active user for an average of two months, that’s about 6,000 users. If our math is accurate, that’s an excellent start.
•  Hired Princeton eCom CIO Larry Greenberg (10/28/99) to be its CTO.
•  Launched a $5,000 I Hate My Bills sweepstakes (10/26/99).
•  Introduced a Small Business Edition that allows multiple users within a company to logon and user various components of the bill management system (10/19/99).
•  Began an affiliates program paying $7 to $12 per new customer (9/15/99).
•  Revamped the look and feel of its Web site including the addition of credibility-enhancing VeriSign (OBR 4/99) and AT&T Ventures logos. AT&T is a key investor.
•  Entered into discussions with possible bank partners, but have nothing to announce.
•  Launched on- and off-line media campaign including regional radio and a soon-to-be-dropped direct mailing.

We are surprised and impressed at the speed with which PayTrust added statement aggregation to its Web site. The company not only beat its two scan-and-pay competitors to the punch, it also beat 20,000 U.S. financial institutions as well. We talked to CEO Ed McLaughlin in mid-November about the latest developments, and were once again impressed with his long-term commitment to making PayTrust a leader in the field. An IPO veteran, he understands the value of staying private during the formative months or years in order to see to it that the company’s business model is

SmartBalance aggregates account information from the user’s other accounts around the Web. Users select which account they want to view using the drop-down box in the upper-right-hand corner.

working. As a public company, he wouldn’t have the flexibility to change courses if the market zigs when he is zagging.

PayTrust developed the SmartBalance feature in-house. It’s been part of the plan since company inception a year ago, but they didn’t want to talk about it until it was ready to be used. After seeing VerticalOne sell its statement aggregation utility for $200 million to S1, PayTrust have wish its priorities had been reversed (OBR 9/99).

Quicken.com to Feature
Statement Aggregation

On Nov. 15, Intuit announced that it would
add financial statement aggregation to its Quicken.com flagship. Users will be able to
view banking, brokerage, and credit card statements and account balances using a
feature dubbed My Accounts using technology from a YourAccounts.com.

Intuit will also market the feature to financial institutions and Web portals to display on their own sites under a co-branded arrangement. So far the only announced companies in the statement aggregation program are Discover Financial Services and TD Waterhouse, the discount brokerage primarily owned by Toronto-Dominion Bank. A number of other companies are in the pipeline.
Contact: Nancy Tubbs is Director of Web Finance
at Intuit, (650) 944-6000.