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Technology Stocks : BillServ.Com(BLLS) Going for the EBPP Market Small Billers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joseph Tigson who wrote (73)	1/25/1999 3:08:00 PM
From: Paul S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 918

billserv.com Claims Space In Crowded EBPP Market (Communications Billing Report)--Popular wisdom seems to have equated "modern" with "electronic" in recent years. So it should be no surprise that when a few executives from Billing Concepts Corp. (BIC) decided to start a business around their own "modern" idea for billing and customer care, "electronic presentment" was written all over it. Six months ago billserv.com set up shop in San Antonio; the company just signed its first electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) customer this month. Claiming the "consolidator" position in the electronic bill presentment space, billserv.com is targeting small and medium-sized billers across the fields of telecommunications, utilities and finance. The company's pitch is that it offers billers an inexpensive alternative to setting up their own EBPP services. "It really is a burden for billers," David Jones, billserv.com senior vice president, told CBR. "It's not like going to the post office today." A biller wanting to go the EBPP route alone must build relationships with the various presentment sites that their customers might want to use, he explained. Billers only have to build one relationship with billserv.com, however, and can leave the leg work to it. For example, if a consumer wants to use the Quicken site as a home base for bill payment, Quicken would send billserv.com a request for enrollment for the particular services the consumer would like to pay for online. Billserv.com then would work with the consumer's service providers - cable service, telephone, utility, etc. - and would deliver the bills to the Quicken site for payment. Billserv.com has a letter of intent to do business with CheckFree Corp. and hopes to add TransPoint to its list soon, Jones said. "I think we come on the scene at a good time because TransPoint and CheckFree have already spent the money on building the infrastructure [for EBPP]," Jones explained. In answer to skeptics about the viability of another EBPP consolidator in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Jones responded that billserv.com is aware of its competition and still believes it has the advantage. For example, Princeton TeleCom Corp.'s consolidator offering is being targeted at the larger billers that billserv.com avoids. Further, the company's competition with CheckFree over a separate product has prevented an alliance like the one between billserv.com and CheckFree. Securing Investors So far, billserv.com has secured $4.1 million from eight private investors, Jones confirmed, and expects to have its system operational in March. The company's stock price on the NASDAQ stock exchange hovered around $5.50 per share at CBR's deadline. The company is taking a local approach to marketing and hoping that once customers get used to paying one set of bills online, they will want to pay all their bills in that manner. For now, billserv.com marketing has been targeting service providers of all kinds in San Antonio, with plans to move to Austin, Houston and Dallas soon. Billserv.com is planning a secondary offering toward the end of the year, Jones said. The company will use the proceeds to build out its sales force and to introduce an online customer care service bureau product. Jones said the customer service aspect is a natural addition to billserv.com's offering. Again, the company plans to aim the service at small and medium-sized businesses that may not be able to afford their own Web-enabled customer service operations.