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

To: g_m10 who wrote (7194)	8/30/1998 3:39:00 PM
From: JimNewby	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8545

I hope that what we are seeing in the market is just a correction, not the beginning of a bear market. IMHO, this is/will be a major correction. The US economy is too sound right now. i.e., inflation and unemployment down, spending up, etc, etc. Look at pre-crash conditions for any recorded bear market and you will find major problems with the economy. Jim

To: g_m10 who wrote (7194)	8/30/1998 4:23:00 PM
From: micny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8545

IMHO, there two parts to what CF is doing. The first one is payment processing between billers, banks and customers. It's done on mainframes and Unix systems. This is the major target for CF. MS has no clue about how this part gets done. In MSFDC deal, FDC is responsible for this part. I haven't heard a word about FDC progress. Keep in mind that CF is 100% ready. It is light years distance. ----You're right here, MSFDC doesn't have a "pay anyone capability", but supposedly is testing their ability to pay, on behalf of consumers, bills they present electronically. The second part is developing front end for banks. This part provides communication between banks' mainframes and customer PCs'. My understanding is that CF has fully developed products for this part to provide the full solution for the banks if they need it, but it doesn't put high expectations on this part. In MSFDC alliance, MS is responsible for this part. ---Actually there are two parts to the front end. The user interface, being that part the user sees and uses, which heretofore was provided by the likes of Intuit, MECA, MS_Money and Checkfree's proprietary software. While providing the front end was something that CF once did, they would much rather leave it to those that do it better than they do. In the new world, this will be web sites developed by financial institutions or, on their behalf, and in turn, Integrion, Edify, SFNB will link to their proprietary account databases, to provide banking data and allow consumers to pick up electronic bills presented to the banks by CF and others for delivery to customers. Also, on behalf of many banks, Integrion will link to CF so that when a consumer wants to pay a bill, his bank will forward those instructions to the Integrion for subsequent delivery to and payment by CF. Absent using Integrion or another facility, banks would have to provide these direct links to CF themselves (ala Chase). For the whole business to lift off, both parts need to be ready, but they don't depend on each other in any other way. As it stands now, we are waiting for the second part to be implemented by banks, and this is why the stock price went down, not because of MS taking CF's business away. ---we are actually waiting for the banks to provide transactionally capable web sites. In the meantime the offer, but do not promote the Quicken type interfaces, because they are costly; thus the shortfall of consumer signups. MS can fill up all the front ends of all the banks, and CF will still have all its business intact. I should've finished all my sentences with "?" instead of "." I think I'm missing something obvious as I can't see any competition from MS while everybody around talks about competition. I hope someone knowledgeable on this thread will point on mistakes in my reasoning. TIA. Hope this helps.