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

To: Benny Baga who wrote (7688)	9/22/1998 10:48:00 PM
From: TQR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8545

Hi All, Nice pictures! But where's the close-up of August? I read an article in the latest issue of ComputerWorld (p 101). It's titled "START-UP ENTERS CROWDED WEB BANKING FIELD". It was written by Robert L. Scheier. I couldn't find it on the CW web site so I'll re-type it below. IT'S GETTING harder to stand out among the online banks crowding the WWW. Compubank N.A., a Houston-based start-up is touting itself as the first nationally chartered bank to operate exclusively on the Web. But rivals and analysts said the Internet bank isn't offering anything different from what other banks offer, either over the Web or over a teller's counter. When it goes live in a few weeks, CompuBank plans to win customers with a combination of low price and useful features, said Jonathan Lack, exec vice pres at the bank. For example, CompuBank will offer basic checking accounts for no monthly fee and with no minimum balance required, as well as unlimited electronic bill payments for $5.50/month. Unlike some other online banks, Lack said, CompuBank will offer customers real-time information about their accounts rather than information that might be hours old because it was delivered in batch mode. And though many traditional banks require special software to bank online, CompuBank will be accessible from any browser that supports 128-bit encryption. But CompuBank faces and increasingly crowded market. A survey of 1,000 financial services companies conducted by USWeb Corp. in Santa Clara, CA, showed that 93% plan at least some Web development in the next few years. Some Web bank pioneers also have stumbled. SFNB, which claims that it was the first Web-only national bank, lost $689,000 last year and has attracted only 14,000 retail customers since opening for business in 1995. <eom> www.compubank.com