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Technology Stocks : CheckFree (CKFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TLindt who wrote (1884)	2/23/1998 11:50:00 AM
From: Roger Bass	Respond to of 8545

TL, on your first question: >>I'm still trying to figure out how a Bank who is running on Checkfree online banking platform could go with MSFDC bill presentment and make the payment part work....If Checkfree is already providing it as part of the existing platform. This is not actually the hardest part to understand. 'Operating a payments service' for customers' accounts at a given bank just means presenting a list of debits to make to different accounts along with the information to appear in customers' statements. In this CF payment / MSFDC bill presentment scenario, that would just mean that customers clicking a 'Pay This' button on a (MSFDC) bill would have this go through the MSFDC system, and those who just click 'pay a bill' (ie enter a payment, without linking it to a bill that is in the system), would have this go through CF, who would make an electronic payment or cut a paper check depending on whether they have that payee in their electronic payee list. One issue underlying all this is: what is the actual cost for making the payments. Clearly the cost for bill-pay services today comes principally from the paper payments part. I don't have the numbers here (yet) but its going to be pennies per payment for electronic payments. Now, if MSFDC is capturing other revenue from those banks for other payment services (eg the pay-any paper check payments, or other electronic payments where they're not actually presenting the bill) then maybe they could afford to lose this. Back to the harder case: where is the money made from being the consolidator for customer bills, when you don't get paid by the biller. Advertising may be the key to this. This is clearly an opportunity linked to the customer side of the equation. I have a hard time seeing there being any 'interconnect' revenue here for MSFDC. In the scenario mentioned, CF would have to present bill summary information to the the MSFDC consolidation hub - they'll probably agree to do this, but I can't see why they would pay MSFDC. The advertising may be what MSFDC were talking about when they mentioned 'revenue sharing'. (It could also be the notional revenue earned from billers as well). Certainly the idea of splitting advertising revenue at the billing stage seems viable - this could be sold either to the biller concerned, or to others. (See the CheckFree and Cybercash websites for analyses of the sources of value to billers in all this) checkfree.com or for the whole ebill presentation checkfree.com cybercash.com Here's another e-billing site from Just-in-Time Systems (Intuit worked with them, and they're partnering with a lot of other people). They have a 'co”petitive' relationship with CheckFree. justintime.com - Roger.