Good luck to Intuit!
Headline: CheckFree, Microsoft Make Home Banking, Bill Payment Easier
====================================================================== New Product Demonstrated at BAI Conference
DALLAS, Dec. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR) (www.checkfree.com) and Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) will combine technologies so that customers can connect to their financial institutions and bank through the World Wide Web in the same way they currently operate personal finance software. CheckFree's BankStreet Web product will feature Microsoft's ActiveX technology, letting banks insert a more sophisticated user interface into their website, with features like those of personal finance packages such as Microsoft Money. In its initial deployment, banking and bill-payment controls will support log-in, balance reporting, account registers, account transfers, the ability to initiate or modify payments and establish new merchant relationships. BankStreet Web with ActiveX is being demonstrated at the CheckFree and Microsoft booths in the BAI's Retail Delivery Systems conference this week in Dallas. The product's initial controls will display the brand of Richmond, Va.-based Crestar Bank at the conference. Microsoft and CheckFree worked together in developing BankStreet Web's ActiveX component. Microsoft selected CheckFree as the partner in this project because of CheckFree's expertise and intimate knowledge of bill-payment processing. CheckFree already allows banks to use their own brand names on BankStreet Web, CheckFree's front-end software package for electronic banking and bill payment over the Internet. ActiveX's addition to BankStreet Web gives banks the ability to offer easier, more flexible and more interactive options to their customers. With this technology, banks deliver uniquely branded, wholly interactive, remote delivery products. "The combining of these technologies allows people to choose some of the best available banking features on the Internet," said Ted Spooner, vice president, Web development, of CheckFree Corp. "ActiveX takes pieces of personal financial programs and makes them appear within the user's web browser. Users will be able to interact with their banks over the Internet in a very easy way." Founded in 1981, Atlanta-based CheckFree Corporation is the leading provider of electronic commerce services, software and related products for more than 780,000 consumers, 1,000 businesses and 850 financial institutions. CheckFree designs, develops and markets services that enable its customers to make electronic payments and collections, automate paper-based recurring financial transactions and conduct secure transactions on the Internet.
SOURCE CheckFree Corporation
Stock held up by vapors at this point.
Robert |