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Gold/Mining/Energy : BCE Emergis - global e-commerce -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gold Panner who wrote (1081)	11/26/1999 11:10:00 PM
From: rocki	Respond to of 1341

BOM/CDN POST launch EPOST --also mentions e-route launch next spring 11/26/99 1:57:00 PM Source: Bloomberg News Toronto, Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of Montreal and Canada Post Corp. started an electronic post office to deliver bills and mail over the Internet, two months ahead of schedule and before a competing service from Royal Bank of Canada. Epost has signed 29 companies, including Sprint Canada, Hudson's Bay Co. and Trimark Investment Management Inc., as customers who can send their bills thought its site. Ottawa-based Canada Post delivered 9.6 billion pieces of mail last year, more than 40 percent of which are utility, credit card, cable television and telephone bills. The rival service E-route, developed last year by Royal Bank of Canada and five other banks, expects to launch its full service next spring. Bank of Montreal, which owns 50 percent of Epost through its electronic commerce unit Cebra Inc., hopes to boost volume in its payment processing business when customers pay their bills online. This service ''will allow for (our) payment business to flourish,'' said Rinah Persofsky, president and chief executive of Cebra. ''We hope we will have a return of 19 percent to 20 percent within three years.'' Epost customers can access the service through the Web site www.epost.ca, where those who opt for electronic service mail delivery will receive bills in a personal mailbox. Consumers can also pay bills by credit card. The companies earlier said they have been offering the service to about 200,000 employees of Canada Post, Bank of Montreal's MasterCard division and Petro-Canada. The online post office will begin with bills and eventually deliver personal and business mail. Mail can be sent to an electronic post office box, which will forward them to consumers' boxes as is done with a bill. Cebra's Persofsky said online billing can help businesses cut by half their printing and postal expenses, which vary from C$0.90 (US$0.61) to C$4.00 a bill. Other billing customers include American Express, Bank of Nova Scotia's Visacard division, Sears Canada, ING Direct, Manitoba Hydro and Grand & Toy. Bank of Montreal shares fell C$0.20 to C$54.20 in Toronto trading.