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

To: Erik T who wrote (9484)	8/31/1999 2:48:00 AM
From: Robert Sloan	Respond to of 20297

I'm not worried about global warming. If its happening I doubt Man is causing it and Michigan would benefit from a little bit of it. Less people moving to the South and West and more vacationing here.

To: Erik T who wrote (9484)	8/31/1999 7:34:00 AM
From: Erik T	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20297

A couple months old: billcast.com <<<< Bank of America and Just in Time Solutions Collaborate to Deliver Interoperability for Electronic Bill Presentment BillCast(TM) Software Implemented as Part of the Bank's Comprehensive Online Bill Delivery Solution for Corporate Billers Bank of America offers a comprehensive set of electronic bill presentment services to its business clients. These services include hosting and publishing bills, handling electronic payments and remittance, and distributing summary bill data to Bank of America online banking customers and customers using other consolidators. Bank of America's online banking customers will also be able to receive bills from other standards-based bill publishers, including those using BillCast, following a simple validation process between the bank and the bill publisher. "Banks are decisively moving toward an industry architecture that supports open standards and interoperability," said Avivah Litan, research director with Gartner Group. "This creates a structure for both the wholesale and retail sides of a bank that balances the consumer's desire to access the maximum number of bills at a central location of their choice, with the control and reach that billers want.">>>> Isn't this essentially what The Spectrum is trying to do? So, who are/will be the major consolidators of bill data? Checkfree has guaranteed a place. Transpoint will be a big player. Spectrum, possibly. BofA possibly. Other major banks may follow or merge/consolidate with another player. Billserv.com and other smaller/regional consolidators will have a role. In the end, perhaps twenty years from now, every biller, large and small, will have to have an onramp to the internet, probably through some consolidator. So, what happens if the standards remain open, so that interoperability is universal? There will be no incentive to work with any particular consolidator, as any would have the same reach as another. Cost and reliability of service would be major factors. Now, why does BofA or Spectrum want an open standards approach? It would mean any billers using them as a consolidator could also present their bills on Yahoo! or Citibank's website. Sure there might be some revenue sharing, but it does not seem like the bill presentment pie is big enough to share on an individual ebill. It seems that anyone who would be a small player in presentment would want open standards just to stay in the game. Checkfree seems to be saying that the money is in the payment, not the presentment, but you need the presentment/content to drive the payment side. BofA has a large audience: 1.3 million online banking customers; we know from experience that not all of these are online bill payers. They need a lot of payments to support their initiative in-house (CKFR barely profitable with 3 million). So, they need to grow online bill payers to make this profitable. They need content/bills from anywhere to do this; hence open standards. Same goes for Spectrum. Yahoo! has the biggest online audience in town. They can sit on their hands and bills will find their way to Yahoo! Open standards or not, everyone will eventually make it work on Yahoo! Note Ms Litan's comment "Banks are decisively moving toward an industry architecture that supports open standards and interoperability," Not necessarily Checkfree, not Transpoint (the leaders). I know Checkfree and MSFT had a big hand in OFX, but MSFT has contaminated it. What about Checkfree? Currently are they interoperable with open standards? Is this a good idea or should Checkfree use its current dominant position to secure a block of billers for themselves letting the various front-ends complete the list of billers from "open" consolidators? I know MSFT does not want to share any of its e-billers? How about Checkfree? Unclear thoughts, late at night. Erik (IMHO)