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To: AugustWest who wrote (152)	2/24/1999 9:52:00 PM
From: Bradley W. Price	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 717

August, I think the following is the key: The Electronic Funds Transfer 1999 initiative emanated from 1996 legislation which called for the federal government to accelerate its ability to make payments—and have them understood by recipients—electronically, according to Allen. But the banking industry at large is not presently well prepared to successfully use electronic data interchange over the ACH network. "The truth of the matter is that fewer than 1,000 banks currently have the capability to pass on remittance information to corporate customers, federal agencies, and independent banking agencies," says Allen. Out of the 1,000, Chase Manhattan, Norwest, Banc One, First Union, and NationsBank account for 40% of all ACH transactions, according to data compiled by American Banker. This remittance information is very, very important. It conveys to the recipient what the electronic payment is for. I have managed payments to goverment contractors (thousands of payments totalling several hundreds of millions of dollars per year) and this exact issue was a huge problem. The company maintained a drop box with a major bank that supposedly was able to receive the remit to info sent out by the government payment office electronically. It didn't work. So this company had to sort out all these payments manually to figure out what they had been paid for and what they hadn't. This is a huge barrier to electronic commerce, and I think we have found a shovel here that is going to help us to mine for gold. Regards, bp