MSFDC first sign ups for billing service.....
Media Daily
Covering the Media Spectrum
December 4, 1997
Vol. 5 - No. 236
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Flip Side of E-Commerce: Microsoft Co-Venture to Launch E-Bills
To help generate buzz for their previously-announced MSFDC joint venture, Microsoft and First Data Corp. announced the names
of the first financial institutions and billers that will trial the forthcoming electronic bill presentment and payment service.
Wells Fargo and KeyBank will be the among the first banks to join the pilot, which is slated to begin in early 1998, and will allow
bank customers to receive their bills online and to pay them electronically.
Companies eager to send their bills electronically, and thus save the postage and printing costs, include billers from a variety of
industries. Among the first to sign on were Advanta Corp., Chase Credit Card, GE Capital, Hartford Financial Services Group,
J.C. Penney, New Century Energies, Payment Systems for Credit Unions, PECO Energy Co. and Shell Oil Co.
To head off any consumer misgivings about data privacy, MSFDC is "committed that no data ownership or privacy rights will be
altered through the development of our electronic payment and presentment service," said Darren Remington, the company's
co-GM. Furthermore, MSFDC intends to offer its policies to the electronic billing industry as a whole "as a model to protect the
interests of billers, banks and consumers," he said.
As for any concerns the banks may have that Microsoft may decide to get into the banking business, Microsoft chairman and
CEO Bill Gates, speaking via satellite hook-up to a banking conference in New Orleans, assured attendees that his company's
activities should be viewed as "complementary to banking business an not a competitive threat," according to the NY Daily News.
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