Thursday April 29, 3:51 pm Eastern Time
Service Disrupted to Online Bankers
By DAN SEWELL
AP Business Writer
ATLANTA (AP) -- As many as 500,000 people who bank online could have run into service disruptions because of a glitch with a CheckFree system, the e-commerce company said Thursday.
At a time when end-of-the-month payments are coming due, customers of 21 of the banks that use CheckFree for electronic banking services have had ''intermittent'' problems since early Monday, the company said.
Some consumers who use Quicken or Microsoft's (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Money financial software have reported problems either logging on or in getting ''kicked out'' before they are finished with their transactions, said Terrie O'Hanlon, a CheckFree spokeswoman.
''Customer by customer, the experience is different,'' she said.
The banks affected are ones in which a new transaction processing system called Genesis is being used. She said CheckFree began switching banks to the new system six months ago.
CheckFree technical staffers have been working around the clock, she said. In a statement, Pete Sinisgalli, chief operating officer, said workers had trouble diagnosing the ''root cause'' of the problem, but on Thursday believed they had identified it and ''have developed what we believe will be the solution.''
He said CheckFree was trying ''to resolve this issue as quickly as possible to restore uninterrupted service for consumers.''
First Union Corp., the nation's sixth-largest banking business, was putting together special instructions and information for customers on its Web page. The Charlotte, N.C.-based First Union has some 16 million customers in the eastern United States.
''Some of our customers are affected. We don't know how many at this point,'' said spokeswoman Danielle Deabler. She estimated the total number of customers who bank online as in the ''hundreds of thousands.''
She said First Union would work with CheckFree to make sure customers weren't charged late fees caused by the problem.
Based in the Atlanta suburb of Norcross, CheckFree Holdings Co. has some 2.8 million customers and helps provide electronic payment services at 350 institutions. Founded in 1981, the company has 1,800 employees.
Only a small percentage of Americans use such services, largely because of unfamiliarity or concerns about reliability and security.
''On behalf of everyone at CheckFree, I want to apologize for the inconveniences consumers have experienced because of this issue, and assure them that we are committed to continually improving the quality and reliability of our services to ensure their confidence,'' Sinisgalli said.
Earlier this week, MSNBC reported that Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) had indicated interest in obtaining CheckFree Holdings. That report helped push shares of CheckFree as high as $52 on Tuesday. The stock has since lost ground but was up $2 at $46.87 1/2 a share Thursday afternoon on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
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First Union Corp (NYSE:FTU - news)
Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news)
Yahoo Inc (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)
Really it hasn't been a big problem for me...I send instructions for bill payments about 5 weeks ahead of schedule from Quicken. Next time I send payment instructions it will be for the first 1st week of June. In my e-bill account directly with CheckFree...I haven't even noticed it...as it's set up to just pay the bills at a fixed amount at intervals I've established.
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