With this agreement, Wachovia will leverage CheckFree's high-quality electronic billing and payment processing capabilities and CheckFree Web, its consumer-centric user interface, to deliver industry-leading capabilities to Wachovia's online customers.

While CheckFree today serves a portion of Wachovia's active online bill payment customers, the financial services organization will eventually migrate all of its retail and small business customers to the CheckFree Web platform. The contract includes provisions to ensure mutual success and provides access to the entire CheckFree infrastructure. CheckFree's industry-leading services will allow Wachovia to bring new features to its online customers, including a single-point bill management interface, faster payments, smart biller setup, enhanced e-mail notifications and much more. Consumers will be able to request greater access to CheckFree e-Bills(SM) from a growing number of national, regional and local billing companies through Wachovia's Web site.

"Wachovia is among the country's premier financial services companies, and this expanded partnership will bring their online customers the country's leading suite of electronic billing and payment capabilities," said Steve Olsen, executive vice president and general manager of CheckFree's Electronic Commerce Division. "We believe Wachovia's leadership will enable our companies to further extend these services into the mainstream consumer market and to pursue additional innovations in the electronic financial services industry."

"CheckFree's long track record of innovation, quality and technology leadership made them the ideal long-term, strategic partner for Wachovia to bring full electronic billing and payment services to our customers," said Lawrence Baxter, Wachovia's executive vice president and chief eCommerce officer. "With CheckFree we are committed to giving our consumers the convenience and financial control of viewing and paying bills with an industry-leading interface through wachovia.com. In addition, the greater availability of e-Bills will deliver important content to our online customers, which will continue to enhance the value the service offers."