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

To: Hockeyfan who wrote (10427)	9/22/1999 12:16:00 PM
From: noiserider	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20297

Hi Hockeyfan, I think you'll find the bill presentation/payment marketplace is just developing. There are lots of pieces of the billing puzzle available, but no one, to date, has wrapped them into one picture. The pieces to me are: 1. bill presentation 2. bill payment 3. ledger (like Quicken) 4. reconciliation Let's skip bill presentation for now because not enough billers are present to get excited about. Yahoo!, as I understand, provides pure bill payment. Single payments or multiple payments in the future to anyone are possible. But there is no link to personal financial software so entering the transaction in a ledger and reconciliation is done manually. Let's hope they add this functionality in the future. Advantages: cheap, use your existing bank. Another bill pay combination is Quicken/CKFR/local bank. This is the combination I use. I record the transactions in the Quicken ledger, mark them for electronic payment and send them via Compuserve to CKFR. I get the bank statement via mail each month and semi-manually reconcile with Quicken. It's faster than pencil and paper as there are no math errors to contend with and Quicken allows "point and click" matching. If I had a bank with OFX? (help me checksperts) capabilities the reconciliation process would be easier; transaction matching is done automatically with only the exceptions reported. Other disadvantage: $12.95/mo. Other advantages: any bank can be used and funds stay in my account until the check clears. Another bill pay combination is Quicken/bank or brokerage/CKFR. I have no experience with this combination, but the following is what I picked up from the various threads. Enter the transaction in the Quicken ledger. Quicken communicates with the bank which then sends the trasactions to CKFR. Reconciliation is automatic with exception reporting. Disadvantage: the bank may freeze funds at the time the check is issued reducing your float. (checksperts - help me here) I'm waiting to change my method of payment untilI see the Intuit/AOL/CKFR combination. I'm hoping Intuit offers an on-line version of Quicken so I can pay bills from any computer and still retain the payment/ledger/reconcilication functionality. In any of the combinations above an on-line bank can be used, but deposits have to be sent by mail. I'm confused by the advantages and disadvantages of all the possibilities and I'm sure the bill paying public is more confused. >>What type of activity/balance reports do you get? Don't know >>How much time does it save you writing out checks each month and reconciling your bank statement? I've never measured it, but I switched years ago after getting frustrated with manual reconciliation, checks, envelopes and stamps. Recurring payments are entered once and forgotten. (How nice to not have to bother with monthly alimony payments) Some further comments: I agree with your view of automatic EFT. There are some bills which I don't want to be involved with like my mortgage and credit card. They are on EFT. I've never had a bad experience, but others don't like to give access to their accounts. On the downside if you ever need to change banks there are lots of letters to write. I'm not excited as a consumer about bill presentation. Billers may see a need to cut their billing costs and bombard me with unwanted advertising, but I'm happy to sit in front of my computer with Quicken and open the mail. When the billers offer me a monetary inducement (positive or negative) to go with electronic presentation I'll switch. Keith

To: Hockeyfan who wrote (10427)	9/22/1999 3:46:00 PM
From: JB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20297

To Hockeyfan Your missing one big point from the billers perspective. With the EFT transaction the biller can only receive your money, the holy grail is to interact with you and hopefully sell you additional services. CheckFree 3.0 contains patent protected software that allows the billers to market to you. When they can convert from their legacy billing software and move to bill presentment these billers will drop EFT services as fast as possible. My guess is that the next big biller that should go live is AT&T. They have been working on their interactive bill for about a year and are in Beta testing with employees.