Sovereign Bank-CheckFree Arbor Day Campaign Results in More than 12,000 New Tree Plantings

One Tree Planted Across the U.S. for Each Consumer-Activated Electronic Bill 


ATLANTA and WYOMISSING, Pa., Sept. 18  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CheckFree Corporation (NASDAQ:CKFR) and Sovereign Bank (NYSE:SOV) today announced results that exceeded expectations for the "Go Paperless" campaign, designed to educate consumers about the green-friendly benefits of receiving bills online.

In partnership with the National Arbor Day Foundation, Sovereign and CheckFree sponsored tree plantings for each new electronic bill, or e-bill, activated at Sovereign Bank during April and May, 2007. The "Go Paperless" campaign focused on educating consumers about the environmental benefits of turning off mailed paper bills and replacing them with e-bills received at their Bill Payment Center within Sovereign Online Banking.

Sovereign Bank customers responded to the environmental campaign by activating e-bills at a 32 percent higher rate than the same period a year ago. E-bill activations and subsequent tree plantings totaled 12,386, well above the aggressive 10,000 goal for the two-month campaign.

E-bills contain the same information as typical paper bills, but are delivered online rather than via regular mail. Because consumers can securely receive, view and pay multiple e-bills at a single financial institution's Website, it can help improve household organization, reduce the stack of paper bills on the kitchen table and enhance the convenience of managing accounts. Replacing paper bills with e-bills can also remove sensitive financial records from unsecured mailboxes to help lower the risk of falling victim to identity fraud.

"Sovereign is committed to educating its customers about simple ways to conserve the environment and improve their household financial management," said Len Goodman, director of product management at Sovereign Bank. "Receiving and paying bills at Sovereign's easy-to-use online banking site offers the added benefit of enhancing the world's water, land and air quality. After analyzing the campaign results, one thing is clear: our customers share our environmental commitment. We look forward to continuing to work with CheckFree's channel marketing team to drive industry best practices in online marketing. We plan to make this Arbor Day 'Go Paperless' initiative an annual event to drive e-bill adoption and help us plant even more trees across America."

During the campaign period, Sovereign also migrated to the latest version of CheckFree Web RXP(SM), the industry's leading electronic billing and payment solution. CheckFree Web RXP provides a rich user experience that gives consumers a real-time, comprehensive view of their bill payment activity, including account balance, e-bill information, pending and recent payments. CheckFree Web RXP also gives users more control than ever over their bill payment activity, including payment scheduling, posting information, alerts and notifications.

In June 2007, Javelin Strategies and Research, an independent research firm, reported that if all U.S. households viewed and paid their bills online, it would annually save 2.3 million tons of wood, or 16.5 million trees, and reduce toxic air pollutants by 3.9 billion pounds of CO2 equivalents (greenhouse gases), akin to having 355,015 fewer cars on the road.

According to The 2007 Consumer Bill Payment Survey, conducted by Harris Interactive and the Marketing Workshop, Inc., and sponsored by CheckFree, 52 percent of e-bill users agreed that "receiving bills in electronic form saves paper and energy, helping our nation's environment" as one of the top reasons they chose to receive e-bills.

Paying bills online can have a positive impact on the environment by reducing the need for checks, envelopes and stamps, and the need to transport paper bills to complete transactions. Many consumers are choosing not only to pay bills online, but receive statements and bills electronically and opt out of mailed paper bills altogether. Combined with electronic bill payment, this can eliminate paper entirely from the consumer billing process.

"By receiving secure e-bills at their banks' Websites, consumers can collectively reduce the environmental impact of paper production, while reaping the organizational, convenience, control and security benefits of online banking," said Alex Hart, executive vice president and general manager of CheckFree Electronic Banking Services. "We applaud Sovereign Bank for educating consumers about all the advantages of going paperless, and their customers who helped plant more than 12,000 new saplings across the United States."

Consumers can sign up to receive e-bills at http://www.sovereignbank.com/ or sign up for online banking and bill payment at any of nearly 800 Sovereign Community Banking Offices in the Northeastern United States. In addition, Sovereign has made it even simpler for consumers to sign up for e-bills. While viewing relevant biller and payment information at sovereignbank.com, consumers receive targeted educational tips based on their past payment behavior. If a consumer pays a bill at sovereignbank.com, but receives it via paper mail, a payment assistant message informs the consumer about how e-bills work, and provides a Website link to set up the service.

Sovereign's New Bill-Pay Calculator

A new tool available at sovereignbank.com helps consumers calculate time and cost savings and learn about the environmental benefits of receiving and paying bills online. By inputting the number of monthly bills into the calculator tool, consumers can immediately determine savings from a monthly to 10-year basis. Calculations are based on the cost of stamps and CheckFree Research Services data on the average time it takes for consumers to pay paper bills versus electronic bills. To use the Bill-Pay Calculator, visit http://www.sovereignbank.com/billpay

Spend Some Time at ebillplace.com

Consumers who want to learn more about electronic billing and payment can visit http://www.ebillplace.com/. This virtual neighborhood helps consumers discover their bill payment tendencies through the Bill Payment Personality Quiz, and includes a demo that shows them how fast and easy it is to receive and pay bills online. This educational Website is a fun, interactive way for consumers to learn about how e-bills can save them time and money, review a list of financial institutions and portals that offer them, see which companies send bills and receive payments electronically, and review a list of items they will need to easily and quickly enroll in an electronic billing and payment service.

About The National Arbor Day Foundation (http://www.arborday.org/)

The National Arbor Day Foundation is a nonprofit, environmental education organization of nearly one million members, with a mission to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees. More information on the Foundation and its programs can be found at http://www.arborday.org/.

About Sovereign (http://www.sovereignbank.com/)

Sovereign Bancorp, Inc., ("Sovereign") (NYSE:SOV), the parent company of Sovereign Bank, is a $90 billion financial institution, as of December 31, 2006, with nearly 800 community banking offices, more than 2,000 ATMs and approximately 12,000 team members with principal markets in the Northeastern United States. Sovereign offers a broad array of financial services and products including retail banking, business and corporate banking, cash management, capital markets, wealth management and insurance. Sovereign is the 17th largest banking institution in the United States. For more information on Sovereign Bank, call 1-877-SOV-BANK or visit sovereignbank.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 household 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 two- thirds of the nearly 14 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 the Company'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 the Company's business, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2007 (filed August 24, 2007). One or more of these factors have affected, and could in the future affect the Company'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 the Company, or any other person, that the objectives and plans of the Company will be achieved. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are based on information presently available to management, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. 

DATASOURCE: CheckFree Corporation



CONTACT: Media Relations, Sheryl Roehl of CheckFree Corporation,

[phone], ; or D.J. Murphy of Sovereign,

[phone], ; or Kevin Sander of Arbor Day

Foundation, [phone], or  



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

http://www.sovereignbank.com/

http://www.arborday.org/ 

Copyright