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Monday September 24, 10:01 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: CheckFree Corporation
Dominion Enhances Electronic Billing and Payment Program With Complete Suite Of CheckFree i-Solutions Software and Services
Dominion Will Provide Analytical Tools, One-to-One Customer Communication And Multiple Payment Solutions to its Residential and Business Customers
ATLANTA, Sept. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- CheckFree i-Solutions, the leading provider of interactive e-billing and e-statement software and services and part of CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR - news), today announced that Dominion (NYSE: D - news) has selected its complete suite of software and payment services to enhance its existing electronic billing and payment initiative.
Dominion will utilize CheckFree i-Utility software -- developed specifically for the needs of utility companies -- to deliver highly interactive electronic bills and statements to its residential and a majority of its business customers. Using the software platform, Dominion will offer tools to its customers for online monitoring and comparing monthly energy usage and the option of viewing charts that graph usage over a period of time. i-Utility will also enable Dominion's customers to access archived bills and statements.
The utility also has added CheckFree i-Solutions' targeted marketing module, Market Direct, to its electronic billing suite. This versatile tool will allow Dominion to turn its statements into powerful customer relationship management, marketing and communications tools to increase customer satisfaction. Using Market Direct the utility will be able to deliver targeted messages for both marketing and customer care to defined customer segments, analyze customer response rates and manage multiple marketing campaigns through a single, user-friendly graphical user interface.
Dominion will offer its customers a biller direct electronic billing service that will be powered by CheckFree i-Solutions. Online payments for Dominion's biller direct site will be processed using the CheckFree Hosted Payment service and the use of a credit card processing service. These solutions enable Dominion to accept electronic payments from its customers over the Web via a Web server. This service provides a high level of payment functionality and convenience to Dominion customers.
Since 1998, Dominion has offered CheckFree-powered electronic bill distribution and payment to Dominion Virginia Power and Dominion North Carolina Power customers, giving them the ability to access, review and pay utility bills at more than 300 of CheckFree's online distribution points, including banks, brokerages, credit unions and Internet portals. Dominion plans to offer the same services to the customers of its Dominion East Ohio, Dominion-Hope and Dominion Peoples effectively bringing electronic billing and payment services to most of its 4 million residential and business customers.
``CheckFree's electronic billing and payment solutions have proven to be a convenient and flexible way for our Dominion Virginia Power and Dominion North Carolina Power customers to manage their finances each month,'' said John Rothnie, project director, Customer Internet Services at Dominion. ``By deploying CheckFree's suite of software and services, we can deliver the interactive e-billing and payment capabilities that our customers expect at any number of Internet destinations -- all from a single source. We are looking forward to providing this service to all of our customers.''
``Dominion is clearly dedicated to providing an abundance of online customer service options -- from meter-reading information to deregulation updates,'' said Tom Stampiglia, president of CheckFree i-Solutions. ``With its adoption of CheckFree's i-Utility, Market Direct and our payment solutions, Dominion is providing their residential and business customers with a valuable online experience that can not be accomplished through a paper bill. This level of rich interactivity creates new opportunities for Dominion to further enhance customer relations within the electronic billing environment.''
About Dominion
Dominion, headquartered in Richmond, Va., is one of the nation's largest producers of energy, with a production capability of 2.7 trillion British thermal units of energy per day. The company has a power-generation portfolio of more than 21,000 megawatts, which is expected to grow to more than 28,000 megawatts by 2005. Dominion is one of the largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies in North America, with 2.8 trillion cubic feet of equivalent reserves. Dominion also serves nearly 4 million retail natural gas and electric customers. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's Web site at www.dom.com .
About CheckFree i-Solutions
As a software group within CheckFree Corporation, CheckFree i-Solutions is the leading provider of end-to-end business-to-consumer and business-to- business solutions for e-billing and payment and e-statement delivery. CheckFree i-Solutions offers CheckFree i-Series software for e-bill and e-statement creation, i-Processing services that include payment and distribution through more than 300 financial services sites and customer care, and i-Hosting services that accommodate software hosting and full-service outsourcing. With 271 billers under contract, CheckFree i-Solutions is committed to helping billers, financial services organizations and biller service providers leverage electronic bills and statements as interactive conduits to customer relationship management, marketing and customer self service applications.
About CheckFree (www.checkfree.com )
CheckFree is the leading provider of financial electronic commerce services and products. Founded in 1981 and celebrating its 20th year in e-commerce, CheckFree is comprised of three divisions: Electronic Commerce, Software, and Investment Services. CheckFree launched the first fully integrated electronic billing and payment solution in 1997. As of June 30, 2001, CheckFree's Electronic Commerce division enabled more than 5.2 million consumers to receive and pay bills electronically. The company has multi-year contracts with 271 of the nation's top billers to provide online billing and payment through more than financial services organizations, including banks, brokerage firms, Internet portals and content sites and personal financial management (PFM) software. CheckFree Investment Services provides a broad range of investment management services to thousands of financial institutions nationwide. The division's clients manage more than 1,150,000 portfolios totaling more than $500 billion in assets.
CheckFree's Software division provides solutions through three operating units: CheckFree ACH Solutions, CheckFree Financial and Compliance Solutions (CFACS), and CheckFree i-Solutions. CheckFree i-Solutions is the leading provider of e-billing and e-statement software and services for both business- to-consumer and business-to-business applications, with more billers as clients than all of its competitors have combined. CheckFree ACH Solutions provides software and services that are used to process more than two-thirds of the nation's six billion Automated Clearing House payments, while CFACS provides reconciliation and compliance software and services to more than 400 organizations in the banking, brokerage, utility, retail, insurance and credit card industries, among others.
Certain of the Company's statements in this press release are not purely historical, and as such are ``forward-looking statements'' within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include statements regarding management's intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations or projections of the future. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the various risks inherent in the Company's business, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2000 (filed September 26, 2000), Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2000 (filed November 14, 2000), and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2000 (filed February 13, 2001); and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2001(filed May 11, 2001). One or more of these factors have affected, and could in the future affect, the Company's business and financial results in future periods, and could cause actual results to differ materially from plans and projections. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements made in this document will prove to be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other person, that the objectives and plans of the Company will be achieved. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are based on information presently available to management, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
SOURCE: CheckFree Corporation |
