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Small financial institutions eager to offer automated clearing house (ACH) services, but wary of ACH infrastructure costs, could benefit from the teaming of CheckFree Corp., of Norcross, Ga., and EDS, of Dallas. Terms of the partnership were not disclosed. CheckFree's new ACH Outsourcing will be marketed as an alternative to in-house ACH processing. EDS will provide systems infrastructure and network connections for the service bureau. EDS provides ACH processing for more than 450 financial institutions, and under the agreement, will make the CheckFree offering a standard part of its services to banks. More than two-thirds of all ACH transactions are processed through CheckFree's PEP+ application software, the vendor claims. With the addition of EDS as a technology provider, CheckFree expects to offer established, high-volume processing capabilities and disaster recovery services. CheckFree says it will continue to offer its PEP+ ACH origination software on a license basis and provide annual maintenance for the product, but will begin marketing ACH Outsourcing to its existing PEP and PEP+ customers as an alternative. Pricing for ACH Outsourcing was not available. (Matt Lewis, CheckFree, 770/734-3404.)