To 007
I'm also a newcomer, but what I think I have learned is that CKFR offers the following hard to replicate service. They let a biller send email bills to their customers and allow their customers to pay electronically (w/o checks) for 23 of the 25 biggest banks. The trick to this is not just getting all the software to work -- which by itself is not so easy with the necessary high standards -- but more important to have ongoing relations with the banks. For a bank to allow someone to pay electronically and efficiently they have to set-up a somewhat intimate relation with that billpayer, because the billpayer has to be able to find out whether the customer has money in his or her account, and to debit the bill as part of the process of finding out whether the money is there. No one else has such a strong set of banking relationships, and it would be a big task to for someone to do it. A few others probably will do so eventually, but it will probably never be something that can be done quickly or easily, and maybe it will only be possible for a few.
While CKFR's software will be matched or surpassed in quality by competitors, CKFR can also buy software if they get behind. The big software problem in the field is not making something work for yourself but making your software work with that of many others -- billers, banks, portals, financial services, etc. This is a relatively massive task, and CKFR has demonstrated the ability to do it well and has accumulated experience. It is not the kind of thing that new nimble organizations can do -- even if they are smarter, because time and mass can only be matched by time and mass. (An equal time and mass is not needed to match CKFR, but maybe at least 1/10 or 1/4, or more, and that is already a lot.
You knowledgeable guys, please correct this if I've got it wrong.
Max |
