CheckFree Receives New Patent on E-Bill Processing
ATLANTA/ORLANDO XPLOR INTERNATIONAL 2001 BOOTH # 2457 - (October 29, 2001)
- CheckFree Corporation (NASDAQ: CKFR) today announced that it has been
awarded an additional patent by the United States Patent & Trademark Office
(USPTO) in the domain of electronic billing and payment (EBP) technology
and processes, focusing specifically on various aspects of electronic
billing. The patent, number 6,289,322, was issued to the Company on
September 11, 2001.
"As the key innovator and pioneer in the electronic billing and payment
market, CheckFree has had patents pending in this domain since 1991. This
new patent adds to CheckFree's stable of more than 100 issued, licensed and
pending domestic and foreign patents in the arena of financial electronic
commerce services and systems," said Matt Lewis, executive vice president
of CheckFree Corporate Development. "CheckFree intends to use its patent
portfolio to aggressively defend its leadership position in the electronic
billing and payment services industry, obtained as a result of more than 20
years of experience and investment."
With this e-payments and EBP history, CheckFree has led the market with a
number of innovations, including:
launching the first fully integrated electronic billing and payment
solution that successfully extended its consumer bill payment service to
encompass electronic bill delivery;
introduction of one of the first "pay anyone" bill payment services;
incorporation of one of the most sophisticated and comprehensive set of
risk management techniques in any EBP system in its core processing
platform;
early support of a wide variety of electronic billing and online payment
solutions from full end-to-end hosting, bill distribution, "pay anyone"
processing and customer care to specific payment processing services,
payment warehousing and more;
a rich variety of payment services, including one of the first
commercially successfully account balance transfer (ABT) payment
services;
merchant relationships and processing capabilities that have allowed the
Company to achieve an electronic remittance rate unmatched by any other
"pay anyone" service provider; and
excellence and sophistication of operational processing and support
services that have allowed the Company to achieve higher availability
and lower error rates than other EBP service providers.
About CheckFree (www.checkfree.com)
CheckFree (NASDAQ: CKFR) is the leading provider of financial electronic
commerce services and products. Founded in 1981 and celebrating its 20th
year in e-commerce, CheckFree is comprised of three divisions: Electronic
Commerce, Software, and Investment Services. CheckFree launched the first
fully integrated electronic billing and payment solution in 1997. As of
September 30, 2001, CheckFree's Electronic Commerce division enabled more
than 5.6 million consumers to receive and pay bills electronically. The
company has multi-year contracts with 279 of the nation's top billers to
provide online billing and payment through more than 400 financial services
organizations, including banks, brokerage firms, Internet portals and
content sites and personal financial management (PFM) software. CheckFree
Investment Services provides a broad range of investment management
services to thousands of financial institutions nationwide. The division's
clients manage nearly 1,200,000 portfolios totaling more than $500 billion
in assets.
CheckFree's Software division provides solutions through three operating
units: CheckFree ACH Solutions, CheckFree Financial and Compliance
Solutions (CFACS), and CheckFree i-Solutions. CheckFree i-Solutions is the
leading provider of e-billing and e-statement software and services for
both business-to-consumer and business-to-business applications, with more
billers as clients than all of its competitors have combined. CheckFree ACH
Solutions provides software and services that are used to process more than
two-thirds of the nation's six billion Automated Clearing House payments,
while CFACS provides reconciliation and compliance software and services to
more than 400 organizations in the banking, brokerage, utility, retail,
insurance and credit card industries, among others.
Certain of the Company's statements in this press release are not purely
historical, and as such are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning
of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include
statements regarding management's intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations
or projections of the future. Forward-looking statements involve risks and
uncertainties, including without limitation, the various risks inherent in
the Company's business, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from
time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities
and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 10-K for the year
ended June 30, 2001(filed September 27, 2001) and subsequent amendments.
One or more of these factors have affected, and could in the future affect,
the Company's business and financial results in future periods, and could
cause actual results to differ materially from plans and projections. There
can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements made in this
document will prove to be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking
statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or
any other person, that the objectives and plans of the Company will be
achieved. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are
based on information presently available to management, and the Company
assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. |
