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Has M&I Data Services, recently renamed Metavante Corp., surpassed CheckFree Corp. to become the largest processor of electronically paid bills? The Milwaukee-based subsidiary of bank holding company Marshall & Ilsley Corp. was coyly suggesting that might be so at press time.
CheckFree's main competitor on the bill payment side also plans to work with CheckFree's largest potential competitor, Spectrum. Although a formal agreement has not yet been signed between M&I and the bank billing network, M&I is working to comply with Spectrum's technical specifications so that M&I can send and receive e-bills through the Spectrum switch.
M&I has for the last 18 months been regarded as the second- largest bill payment provider, sandwiched between Atlanta-based CheckFree and Princeton, NJ-based Princeton eCom. That followed M&I's December 1998 acquisition of Travelers Express, Minneapolis, then the second-largest bill payment processor.
M&I is pretty confident that CheckFree's lead has narrowed, but it can't state anything about the vendors' relative positions until better research is done, explains Nancy Langer, president of a newly created M&I division for electronic bill payment and presentment.
"It depends on how you measure it," explains Langer, adding, "we think we have more financial institutions (as bill payment customers)." If one looks at reported transaction volumes-how many bill payments M&I and CheckFree process monthly-CheckFree seems larger. However, M&I speculates that unnamed competitors overestimate how many bill payments they process by lumping various types...