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

To: Brooks Jackson who wrote (12823)	12/21/1999 5:15:00 PM
From: Charlie Smith	Respond to of 20297

Rodney is dead, and Yahoo! did it. RIP: CheckFree and BlueGill join forces By Debra McGarry, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 2:50 PM ET Dec 21, 1999 NewsWatch ATLANTA (CBS.MW) -- Paying bills just got easier with the announcement Tuesday that online billing and payment provider CheckFree will buy BlueGill Technologies for approximately $280 million. CheckFree (CKFR: news, msgs), which is up 3 3/8 to 92 11/16, is the leader in electronic billing and payment. Through CheckFree, consumers can pay their bills online through a variety of options, such as Yahoo and Intuit. Under the deal, CheckFree will exchange 3.2 million shares of its stock for all outstanding BlueGill shares in a deal valued at about $280 million. BlueGill Technology and CheckFree will offer online billing and payment for billers, banks, Internet portals and business partners. BlueGill's technology will allow CheckFree to get consumers online more quickly and easily to pay their bills. BlueGill, an international software development company, provides Internet billing and statement creation software applications. Its software is installed at financial service institutions, telecommunications companies, utilities and service bureaus. BlueGill's i-Series software will connect to CheckFree's Genesis 2000 electronic billing and payment processing platform and will continue to connect, as it does today, to all commercially reasonable distribution points. "Each month, businesses interact with their customers through a vitally important conduit, the bill. How that interaction can be channeled into other marketing, sales and customer service applications over the Internet is one of the most enticing promises of this technology," said Pete Kight, CheckFree's chairman and chief executive officer. See press release. The deal is scheduled to be finalized in early 2000. BlueGill's experience with customers in South America and Europe will give CheckFree a stronger foothold to expand its services Internationally.