CheckFree's OpenChannel(SM) Strategy Establishes the Foundation for a New Generation of Integrated Online Financial Services

ATLANTA and LAS VEGAS, Nov. 14  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BAI Retail Delivery Conference Booth #2021 - CheckFree Corporation (NASDAQ:CKFR) today unveiled its innovative OpenChannel(SM) strategy, laying the foundation for a new generation of integrated and optimized online financial services that deliver greater flexibility and lower total cost of ownership for financial institutions of all sizes.

CheckFree's OpenChannel provides a flexible range of options for implementing online banking and bill payment functionality across multiple channels. Utilizing industry-standard web services, financial institutions can customize the presentation of online banking and bill payment functionality to meet the unique needs of their customers and differentiate their online capabilities.

USAA, a Fortune 200 diversified financial services company, leveraged CheckFree's OpenChannel strategy and the CheckFree Builder(TM) suite of open web services components to customize its online banking and bill payment user experience and streamline navigation to better serve its 6 million members.

"USAA's global membership relies extensively on usaa.com, so we place a premium on making our services as accessible and easy to use as possible through the online channel," said Jeff Dennes, executive director, USAA. "CheckFree OpenChannel gives us the control and flexibility we need to enhance the user experience, improve integration across the site, and deliver a full range of online and mobile banking functionality to our members."

CheckFree's flexible deployment options enable financial institutions to seamlessly integrate online banking, electronic billing and payment, and selected value-added services into an end-to-end solution that can either be fully hosted by CheckFree or used as individual components as part of a hybrid model that they can integrate into their existing environments.  Leveraging the same web services that push electronic banking and bill payment functionality to a financial institution's online channel, CheckFree can also enable access to these services across multiple channels, including mobile devices, ATMs, kiosk, teller stations and contact centers. By providing their customers with more options, financial institutions can increase satisfaction and retention.

"The online channel is a growing priority for financial institutions as they seek to optimize customer loyalty, retention and profitability," said Alex Hart, executive vice president and general manager, CheckFree Electronic Banking Services. "CheckFree OpenChannel brings together the industry's best online banking and bill payment capabilities with an extremely flexible approach to integrating, implementing and managing world class financial management solutions across a diverse range of devices, channels and platforms."

"As online financial services evolves, the integration and management of new, compelling services into the legacy environment threatens to bring more complexity, preventing banks from maximizing the return on investment through an optimal customer experience," said James Van Dyke, president and founder of Javelin Strategy & Research.  "As a result, open and flexible system approaches for integrating diverse electronic financial content and services becomes more important for helping financial institutions keep up with the rapid pace of new technology services, such as more interactive bills and statements, and online money management capabilities, converging content from lines of business and much more."

Financial institutions can use the OpenChannel strategy to take advantage of new capabilities, such as:

   -- Electronic Bill Payment Integration - Industry-standard web services
      can enable financial institutions to quickly and cost-effectively
      implement a wide range of online banking and electronic bill payment
      functionality to a user interface that they control while leveraging
      their existing technologies.
   -- Value-Based Routing /Payment Preference - The OpenChannel strategy
      enables financial institutions to deliver premium content, such as
      data-fed electronic bills, and additional capabilities such as
      expedited payments and card-based payments. In addition, CheckFree
      plans to expand the processing window to approximately 10 p.m. Eastern
      time to enable even more payments to be processed by the next business
      day. Whether the payment warehouse is standalone or part of an
      integrated CheckFree solution, financial institutions can control
      payments data, routing and the user experience, while reducing total
      cost of ownership and taking advantage of increased revenue-generating
      opportunities.
   -- Security - The OpenChannel strategy is designed to enable CheckFree
      FraudNet(TM), a proactive fraud detection and case management system,
      to be delivered as part of a service-based model. Utilizing web
      services, a financial institution can leverage the power and
      intelligence of CheckFree's extensive bill payment network by sending
      payments to CheckFree for scoring. Those payments that fail to meet
      the financial institution's risk threshold could then be proactively
      stopped before they are processed.
   -- Cross Sell and Upsell Services - OpenChannel enables financial
      institutions to leverage the rich data in their CheckFree payment
      warehouse as well as data from other sources to analyze consumer
      behavior for their specific customer segments, and to plan and execute
      targeted marketing campaigns aimed at improving online banking and
      bill payment adoption and usage.
   -- Mobile Banking and Payments - Through web services, CheckFree enables
      banks and credit unions to offer customers the convenience of banking
      and paying bills using their mobile devices. OpenChannel provides the
      flexibility to support a wide range of technologies, including micro-
      browser wireless application protocol (WAP), short message service
      (SMS) text messaging and device-resident applications. Some financial
      institutions will choose one of these technologies, while others may
      use a combination of approaches to support different online banking
      and bill payment functionality, such as paying bills, checking account
      balances or payment histories, transferring funds or receiving alerts.

  About USAA (http://www.usaa.com/)


USAA, a diversified financial services company, is the leading provider of competitively priced financial planning, banking, investment, and insurance products to members of the U.S. military and their families. Named by BusinessWeek as 2007's Customer Service Champion, USAA provides convenient and accessible financial products to its 6 million members. For more information about USAA, or to learn more about membership, visit http://usaa.com/.

About CheckFree (http://www.checkfreecorp.com/)

Founded in 1981, CheckFree Corporation (NASDAQ:CKFR) provides financial electronic commerce services and products to organizations around the world. CheckFree Electronic Commerce solutions enable financial services providers to offer the convenience of online banking, and, along with billers, to offer the convenience of receiving and paying bills online, via phone or in person through retail outlets. CheckFree Investment Services provides a broad range of investment management solutions and outsourced services to hundreds of financial services organizations, which manage about $1.8 trillion in assets. CheckFree Software develops, markets and supports software applications that are used by financial institutions to process more than 75 percent of the nearly 16 billion Automated Clearing House transactions in the United States. The division also provides financial institutions and other organizations with payment processing and consulting, reconciliation and exception management, fraud and risk management, cash and logistics management, and compliance software and services.

Certain of CheckFree's statements in this press release are not purely historical, and as such are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include statements regarding management's intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations or projections of the future. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the various risks inherent in CheckFree's business, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in CheckFree's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including CheckFree's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2007 (filed August 24, 2007), and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2007 (filed November 7, 2007). One or more of these factors have affected, and could in the future affect CheckFree's business and financial results in future periods, and could cause actual results to differ materially from plans and projections. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements made in this press release will prove to be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by CheckFree, or any other person, that the objectives and plans of CheckFree will be achieved. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are based on information presently available to management, and CheckFree assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. 

DATASOURCE: CheckFree Corporation



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Web site:  http://www.checkfreecorp.com/

http://www.usaa.com/ 

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