CheckFree Says It Has Cleared Up Rash Of Online-Banking Problems
Dow Jones Online News, Friday, April 30, 1999 at 16:21
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- CheckFree Holdings Corp. said Friday that
computer problems that hindered online banking this week for customers
of more than 20 financial institutions nationwide appear to have been
cleared up.
CheckFree spokeswoman Stephanie Norton said Friday that the system
was back operating at 98% of capacity. The company expected to issue an
announcement later in the day saying the system was operating at full
capacity.
Some online-banking customers at large banks, including Wells Fargo &
Co. (WFC) and First Union Corp. (FTU), had trouble paying household
bills because of a computer glitch at bill-processor CheckFree.
CheckFree (CKFR) is a Norcross, Ga., company that designs and markets
services that allow customers to make electronic payments, collections
and other transactions on the World Wide Web.
The trouble was first noticed Monday as customers with accounts at
banks who pay their household bills electronically using Microsoft
Inc.'s (MSFT) Money and Intuit Inc.'s (INTU) Quicken - two personal
finance software products - began having intermittent problems logging
onto their bill-paying systems and completing transactions.
The problem was a software glitch in CheckFree's new Genesis
transaction processing system, which so far handles 21 of the company's
350 client banks. According to some figures, the system's problems could
have affected 400,000 to 500,000 customers.
CheckFree told The Wall Street Journal it was testing a new computer
code that should restore service.
Both Wells Fargo and First Union downplayed the number of customers
that the outage affected. Officials at both banks said the majority of
their online customers bank directly on the banks' Web sites, which were
not affected by CheckFree's systems problems.
For instance, only about 15% to 20% of Wells Fargo's 860,000 online
banking customers use either Quicken or Microsoft Money software, said
spokeswoman Wendy Grover.
For those customers, she said, the bank has agreed to waive a month's
worth of online banking fees if they had problems due to CheckFree's
glitch.
Meanwhile, Wells Fargo will hold discussions with CheckFree, which
operates for the bank under an agreement that mandates a guaranteed
level of service, Grover added.
Elsewhere, First Union is negotiating with CheckFree about possibly
waiving late fee charges for customers whose payments were delayed.
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