On international markets, the following was posted:
<<<CheckFree's Jim Edrington
..wait till ckfr beats msfdc into japan, brazil, china, etc.
...then stock price will rise
....one small worry. as the pace of international net distribution spreads, where is ckfr.
..do they need more alliances with folks like aol, yhoo, etc. (on their overseas accounts) to be a button available for all to see?
CheckFree has, to my knowledge, minimal if any planning on international opportunities. Their focus is on getting scale in the US market.
This is to some extent appropriate. Distribution of web bill presentment and payment service on international websites, be they Intuit's, Yahoo's or whoever's, doesn't help much without (a) the biller relationships and (b) integration with the payments systems to get payment from customer to the biller.
(b) alone would be an immense undertaking, as payment systems are very different, and in many cases smoother-functioning than in the US. In Germany for instance, most bills are paid today by direct debit or by direct ACH (wire) transfer.
The value proposition (a) to develop new biller relationships is therefore less than clear.
There are I think some other scenarios for payments where CF could have a role which would be more easily internationalisable, but those would be rather speculative at this stage.
- RB |
