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

To: TLindt who wrote (10259)	9/17/1999 6:35:00 PM
From: TLindt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20297

INTERVIEW - Spectrum to offer e-billing in Nov Updated 4:37 PM ET September 17, 1999 By Gilles Castonguay NEW YORK (Reuters) - The three U.S. banks behind the new Spectrum online venture plan to offer billing services in the next two months, joining the race for control of a new market that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Chase Manhattan Corp. First Union Corp. and Wells Fargo and Co. are set to start routing bills through Spectrum by the end of November. But they will not do the same with payments until the middle of next year when they have the venture working properly, an official at one of the banks said Friday. "Our goal is to stay focused on getting this up and running right now," Kellie Scott, a senior vice president at First Union with a seat on Spectrum's board, told Reuters. Banks are jostling to position themselves in a market whose revenue potential has been estimated by one analyst to be about $500 million in the next few years. Online billing is the latest in a series of Internet services that banks are offering to customers in a struggle to not only expand their market share, but defend the one they already have. Although Chase, First Union, and Wells Fargo already offer their customers some form of online billing, Spectrum EBPP LLC would let them offer a wider range of services, said Scott. They also hope that Spectrum will help them catch up with CheckFree Corp. which is far ahead of the pact more than 100 billers and nearly 3 million payees. Spectrum, whose creation was announced by the three banks on June 23, would act as a hub, routing bills and payments between companies and their customers through the Internet. For example, it would enable a phone company to send its monthly bills electronically to the bank accounts of its customers, who in turn would pay them off in the same fashion. Chase, First Union, and Wells Fargo hoped to sign up a number of banks, brokers, and Internet companies as Spectrum customers by the end of the year, said Scott. But they would stop short of signing up new investors. "We've had lots of interest expressed by multiple other financial institutions and some vendors -- but, at the moment, its the three of us," she said. "That isn't to say that we won't entertain other equity owners as we go forward." Scott declined to say how much money each bank had put up to create Spectrum, and whether they would eventually sell stock in it. "That is always a possibility." Although Spectrum's founders do business with CheckFree, they plan to compete with it eventually, said Scott. She said Spectrum could grow into a formidable rival by capitalizing on about 59,000 billers and 60 million customers who already do business with the three banks. Only about 3 million of those customers bank online, however. Meanwhile, market penetration for online billing services is still relatively low. About 4.5 of U.S. households that have a computer paid bills online in 1998, according to one analyst estimate. Chase, First Union, and Wells Fargo are scheduled to sign an agreement to make Spectrum an independent company on Oct. 1, according to Scott. news.excite.com