Banking SaaS promotes online financial services integration.

Press Release Summary:



OpenChannel(SM) provides options for implementing online banking and bill payment functionality across multiple channels, including mobile devices. Utilizing Web services, financial institutions can customize presentation to meet needs of their customers and differentiate online capabilities. Fully hosted by CheckFree or used as part of hybrid model integrated into existing environments, solution supports value-based routing/payment preference and cross sell/upsell services.



Original Press Release:



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



ATLANTA and LAS VEGAS, Nov. 14 - 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.

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