Checkfree has a way to go to be considered a leader in
this market segment
Teflon,
Good to hear from you, hope all is well. While there is no
doubt that the competition in EBPP is very intense right
now, I'm surprised that you wouldn't consider Checkfree a
leader. Consider the following statistics:
Over 3 million current subscribers, with the processing
infrastructure already in place to support 30 million.
Over 12 million transactions processed every month.
Contracts with 64 billers, which represent the
opportunity to deliver over 500 million bills per month,
representing over 70% of the telecom bills, 24% of the
utility bills, 22% of the mortgage bills and 28% of the
credit card bills in the U.S.
Distribution:
23 of the 25 largest U.S. banks
8 of the top 10 U.S. brokerage firms
4 of the top 5 credit unions
Quicken.com
Yahoo!
WingspanBank.com
Excite@home (expected before the end of the year)
AOL (rumored for months, but not yet announced)
600 service reps in place to support both consumers and
billers.
Electronic connectivity with over 1100 merchants, enabling
Checkfree to submit over 50% of its subscriber payments
electronically.
Both of the companies you mentioned rely heavily on
scanning paper bills in their business models. To match
CKFR's current transaction volume, they would have to scan
about 400,000 bills a day. Are they set up to handle that?
Actually, I would have thought that most industry analysts
would have pointed to the Transpoint consortium that
includes Microsoft as Checkfree's nearest competitor. At
least they're live with a few billers (5, at last count I
believe).
In the end, success in EBPP is going to require achieving a
critical mass of billers and subscribers. Checkfree seems
well positioned to achieve that critical mass. However,
your experience is telling you otherwise. I'd appreciate
hearing more of your viewpoint when time and circumstances
permit. |
