This frees the 40+ million online bill payers to choose the service that's best for them, and enables financial providers with differentiated bill pay services to capture a greater share of the fast growing bill pay market.

"This is the only service of its kind to make switching bill pay providers easy," said Peter Hazlehurst, senior vice president of product development at Yodlee. "We believe that Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator is an essential component for all financial institutions aiming to increase the effectiveness of online account openings and drive greater usage and adoption of existing bill pay services. Where consumers pay their bills is their 'primary relationship'. We want to help financial institutions make it easier for consumers to pay bills with them."

How Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator Works

Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator uses patented technology to "read" all the configuration settings of an existing bill pay service. This information includes: all payee information (electronic and paper), scheduled and recurring payments, and e-bill configuration.

A simple wizard then guides a consumer through the completion of the payee set-up process at the new bill pay service, auto-filling all available biller information and payment profiles. Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator enables scheduled and recurring bill payments and optionally cancels the consumer from the existing service.

"Our research indicates that, by 2010, 13 percent of checking accounts will be opened online in the United States, up from three percent in 2006. Tools such as such as Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator will be instrumental in helping banks attract more customers online and streamline the onboarding process," said Gwenn Bezard, research director at Aite Group.

Financial institutions benefit from using the Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator service to:

• Open new accounts quicker and easier than ever before, and ensure that the new account is an active one with transactions flowing in and out of it
• Become the primary relationship with people opening new accounts as well as via increased transactional activity
• Increase bill pay adoption by easing the switching pain from other bill pay services in order to capture new customers
• Improve customer satisfaction by being able to promote and capitalize on the unique differentiators of their bill pay service to offer customers a superior bill pay experience
• Increase operational efficiencies by automating the set-up of new bill pay accounts
• Seamlessly integrate the Yodlee service with an existing bill pay service with no integration requirements

Consumers benefit from:

• Easy conversion & set-up of new bill pay services - including the ability to "port" existing payee information, payment schedules, and e-bill configurations
• No missed payments - because Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator automatically moves scheduled and recurring payments to the new financial institution's bill pay service
• Increased convenience from being able to save preferences set-up parameters
• Improved service because consumers can choose the bill pay service they want without missing payments or having to spend substantial time setting up the new service in order to switch

Yodlee BillPay Account Accelerator will be available for financial institutions in Q1/2007 with pilot projects scheduled for Q4/2006.