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To: AugustWest who wrote (1254)	1/14/1999 8:06:00 AM
From: Benny Baga	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20297

M&I Buys Second-Ranked Bill Payment Processor January 14, 1999 American Banker : Broadening its presence in home banking, M&I Data Services has acquired a Travelers Express unit that specializes in electronic bill payment. Travelers' Moneyline Express business, with more than 700 financial institution customers, is the second-largest provider of consumer bill- payment processing in the United States, behind Checkfree Corp. of Atlanta. Terms were not disclosed. The acquisition catapults Milwaukee-based M&I Data Services, a leader in data processing, into the bill-payment market, estimated by Dove Associates at $139 billion. "We want to participate in the accelerating shift toward electronic payment systems," said Michael D. Hayford, executive vice president at M &I. M&I, a unit of Marshall & Ilsley Corp., was already using the Moneyline service to provide bill-payment processing to its 170 home-banking clients. The deal could mean more features at the same or lower cost, since only a single vendor would be receiving fees, said one customer, Lloyd L. Hamm Jr. of Eastern Bank in Lynn, Mass. Eastern, with $2.7 billion of assets, also uses M &I for data processing. Mr. Hamm, the bank's senior vice president and chief information officer, said he has found M&I's bill pay customer service capabilities "exemplary. " But Christopher Musto, senior analyst at Gomez Advisors Inc., Concord, Mass., said he is "not sure M&I's customers should be unabashedly happy about M&I owning a bill-payment processor." Though it makes sense for M&I to get a "stake in the ground on this side of processing," Mr. Musto said, M&I is likely to require its home banking customers to use its bill-pay services. Banks may want the option of switching providers, he said-especially with the advent of electronic bill presentment. M&I does not offer that service yet. But Mr. Hamm said he believes the company will have no trouble building a presentment service in time to meet increased demand. "By the time our customers are ready, M&I will be ready," he said. M&I's Nancy Langer said the company plans to launch a broad pilot of electronic bill presentment in the second quarter with Transpoint, a joint venture of Microsoft, First Data Corp., and Citigroup. Ms. Langer runs M&I Data Services' four-year-old electronic commerce services unit. The unit supports users of M&I's proprietary dial-up software, Internet banking software licensed from Security First Technologies, and Microsoft's Money and Intuit's Quicken packages. Revenues of the four-year-old unit have at least doubled each year, Ms. Langer said. Travelers Express, based in St. Louis Park, Minn., is the leading provider of money orders in the United States and No. 2 in wire transfer services, according to a spokeswoman. The company entered bill-payment processing in 1995 by acquiring the Milwaukee-based processor PayMate. Now it is retreating from bill payment "to concentrate on its core payment services," the spokeswoman said. Copyright c 1999 American Banker, Inc. All Rights Reserved. americanbanker.com By CHRIS COSTANZO