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NEWS RELEASE
CONTACT:
CheckFree Receives NACHA Quality Award for ARC
Processing
San Antonio, Texas, April 11, 2005 –
NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association
presented one of its two 2005 Kevin O'Brien ACH
Quality Award to CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR).
CheckFree is being recognized as a third-party
service provider for achieving a 0.01 percent
administrative return rate on ARC payments it
processes.
Through software and outsourcing, CheckFree
processes millions of ARC transactions each month
for national telecommunications, credit card issuers
and regional utilities. In the 4th quarter 2004,
CheckFree's administrative return rate for these ARC
payments was 0.01 percent, fourteen times better
than the industry average of 0.14 percent.
"Quality is a critical component of any payment
product or process, and this year's NACHA Quality
Awards are excellent examples of improvements that
help make check conversion the highest quality
product possible," said Elliott C. McEntee,
President and CEO of NACHA. "Congratulations to
CheckFree on winning one of this year's NACHA
Quality Awards."
"CheckFree's analysis showed that minimizing
administrative returns impacts every key performance
component of ARC processing, and this metric
measures success and quality for consumers, billers,
ODFIs, RDFIs, and the ACH Network as a whole," said
Steve Olsen, Executive Vice President and General
Manager of CheckFree's Electronic Commerce division.
"Because CheckFree's ARC processes are closely tied
with its electronic bill payment operations, this
processing quality is refined and strengthened each
day to benefit consumer-based electronic payments
whether they are initiated online or through a paper
check sent to a lockbox."
An "administrative return" is an ACH debit that the
RDFI cannot post to an account because it contains
an invalid or unrecognizable account number. Because
administrative returns have been a concern of
billers, their financial institutions and service
providers have addressed the issue and offered
solutions. The result is that the administrative
return rate for ARC is less than half the rate of
0.31 percent for all ACH debits. In addition, the
ARC administrative return rate has steadily declined
since beginning at 0.46 percent when first available
in March 2002.
"CheckFree's success with administrative returns
contributes to the overall quality of ARC payments,
and shows the industry that steps can be taken to
minimize the impact of administrative returns," said
McEntee.
The Kevin O'Brien ACH Quality Award is presented
annually to one or more organizations to recognize
best practices in ACH participants' efforts to
maintain and improve the quality of ACH services and
the integrity and reliability of the ACH Network.
The award is named for the late Kevin O'Brien,
NACHA's Chairman in 1999-2000.
The ACH Network is a national electronic payments
system used by the nation's 20,000 financial
institutions and an estimated 4.8 million businesses
and 145 million Americans. ACH payments include
Direct Deposit of payroll, Social Security benefits
and tax refunds, Direct Payment of consumer bills,
e-checks, business-to-business payments, and Federal
tax payments. In 2004 there were more than 12
billion ACH payments made, worth $28.7 trillion.
About NACHA - The
Electronic Payments Association
NACHA is the leading
organization in developing electronic solutions to
improve the payments system. NACHA represents more
than 11,000 financial institutions through direct
memberships and a network of regional payments
associations, and 650 organizations through its
industry councils. NACHA develops operating rules
and business practices for the Automated Clearing
House (ACH) Network and for electronic payments in
the areas of Internet commerce, electronic bill and
invoice presentment and payment (EBPP, EIPP),
e-checks, financial electronic data interchange
(EDI), international payments, and electronic
benefits transfer (EBT). Visit NACHA on the Internet
at www.nacha.org.
About CheckFree
Founded in 1981,
CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR) provides
financial electronic commerce services and products
to organizations around the world. CheckFree
Electronic Commerce solutions enable thousands of
financial services providers and billers to offer
their customers the convenience of receiving and
paying their household bills online or in person
through retail outlets. CheckFree Investment
Services provides a broad range of investment
management solutions and outsourced services to
thousands of financial services organizations, which
manage more than $1 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 10 billion
Automated Clearing House transactions in the United
States. The division also provides reconciliation,
financial messaging, compliance and electronic
billing and statement software to hundreds of
organizations across the globe.
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