Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : CheckFree Holdings Corp. (CKFR), the next Dell, Intel? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Erik T who wrote (7681)	7/3/1999 7:43:00 PM
From: Erik T	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20297

Page 1: Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP): delivering electronic versions of bills to consumers over the internet, and return electronic payment processing. Eliminates inherant waste and inefficiencies of paper-based billing and paper checks. Electronic Billing and Payment Industry Facts The Market Americans spend on average about two hours a month paying the 18.2 billion bills a year sent to them, according to Tower Group, a Newton, Mass.-based market research company. U.S. businesses send or receive some 26 billion bills, account statements and payments annually. And they pay some $17 billion in postage alone, according to the U.S. Postal Service. The cost for billers to print, process and distribute paper-based bills ranges from 85 cents to $1.50 each. The cost of sending and receiving an electronic bill, by comparison, is about 40 cents each per round trip. Hence, electronic bill presentment (the delivery of bills in an electronic format via the Internet) has been dubbed as the "killer app" of this industry: It completes a paperless round-trip for consumers, saves money for billers and builds online business for financial institutions. The Case for Electronic Banking Tower Group predicts banks will spend $930 million annually on online banking applications and services by 2002. Almost all these applications will be based on the World Wide Web standards. Experience has shown that subscribers are ready and waiting to enroll when financial institutions aggressively market their electronic financial services: Preliminary figures and results indicate that as many as 10,000 subscribers per day would sign up if offered the choice. Piper Jaffray expects online banking households to grow from 4.4 million at year-end 1998 to 25 million at year-end 2003. At least 55 percent of the so-called "Newbie" online users are women, according to research company NetSmart. This firm, which recently released a study subtitled "e-Commerce: Internet Users Mean Business," says women pay 70 percent of the household bills, and "they will start the online financial experience with bill payment." The Case for Electronic Billing and Payment About 2 percent of consumers use electronic bill payment through banks and personal financial management software (Quicken, for example), and industry revenues total about $200 million. Industry analysts believe electronic bill payment hasn't "taken off" mainly because consumers want a complete, electronic "round-trip" – that is, they want to receive their bills electronically as well as pay them electronically. Electronic bill presentment still isn't available in most places, but that is expected to change dramatically starting in 1999. Research indicates that consumers will begin utilizing electronic bill presentment in large numbers when at least four bills per month are presented online to them. Consumers will also prefer to receive their electronic bills at one central site, similar to today's mailbox. According to a recent study by Killen & Associates – a market research firm based in Palo Alto, Calif. – by the end of 2000, almost eight billion repetitive bills will be presented electronically each year. Overall, the Killen report asserts that U.S. utilities could save $1.2 billion in billing costs by using electronic bill presentment and payment. The number of bills presented electronically is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 275 percent. (source: Piper Jaffray) Within five years, industry analysts believe the majority of banking households will move more money electronically than by paper-based systems, and industry revenues will total approximately $6 billion.

To: Erik T who wrote (7681)	7/3/1999 8:07:00 PM
From: Erik T	Respond to of 20297

Page 2 Electronic Bill Presentment Before anything can happen, a biller must convert its billing data to a form that can be delivered over the internet. Many companies have risen to this challenge. These are the electronic bill enablers, and come in two flavors: Full-service bureaus and bill presentment software companies. Full-service bureaus develop and manage biller's electronic billing initiatives, i.e. take billing data, convert to electronic form, maintain the actual servers, etc. Companies in this space include: Billserv.com--Full service bureau offering EBPP services to small and medium size billers. Will present these bills on multiple front-ends: Web sites such as Checkfree, Transpoint, Quicken.com, banks and billers own site. Partners with Checkfree for distribution on E-Bill network, BlueGill Technologies, and Cybercash. EDS--Software and service bureau services for home banking with EBPP. EDS uses Checkfree for its payment processing. Princeton ECom--Outsourcer for electronic presentment and payment. Customers can pay online or by telephone. Payment system through electronic lockbox service or "e-Collect" (unclear how this works) Claim to be only service allowing both bill presentment and payment through billers web site, although others do this via partnerships. Do not offer pay anyone. International Billing Services (Now called Output Technology Solutions)--Complete electronic billing solutions: take billing data, create custom-designed electronic versions, distributes bills. Partners are Checkfree, Intuit, Transpoint, Cybercash, NETdelivery. NETdelivery--Service bureau that works one-on-one between biller and consumer and links consumer-to-bank-to-biller. No aggregation with other billers. Claim ability to "Pay any bill electronically, even paper bills." Partners are Output Technology Solutions, AMS, Interface Systems. Bill Presentment Software Companies provide the technology to allow billers to initiate and maintain their electronic billing initiative on their own. Companies here include: BlueGill Technologies--Provider of software for bill presentment by billers. Checkfree has licensed BlueGill software to offer a complete out-of-the-box EBPP system using Checkfree's E-Bill distribution and payment infrastructure. edocs--Primarily a software company, but can offer end-to-end solutions through partnerships. Helps biller take legacy billing data and convert it to a form that can be presented on the internet. Bill presentment on biller's own web site or for distribution to consolidators. Payment services are through Checkfree or Cybercash. Just in Time Solutions--Software to allow billers to manage their own electronic billing. Developed in accord with OFX billing standards. Allows Companies to present through billers web site or through a consolidator. Partnerships with Checkfree, Intuit, AT&T, AMS. Oracle--Software for electronic billing. Originally attempted to create their own EBPP engine, but failed. Now partnered with Checkfree who provides the infrastructure to provide Oracle's Internet Bill & Pay. One specialty company deserves mention. Mobius Group provides software for high-volume archiving, retrieval and presentment of bills. Can hold billions of bills, statements, check images, remittances, correspondenc, raw transactions, photos and audio recordings. Now offers bill presentment in concert with Checkfree's delivery and payment services.