CheckFree provides industry-leading electronic billing and payment services to millions of consumers through more than 2,000 financial institutions and other providers. For fiscal 2006, which ended June 30, 2006, CheckFree processed 1.13 billion transactions, representing 25 percent growth over the previous fiscal year.

CheckFree will implement RSA's risk-based authentication technology to provide financial institution and biller customers with additional layers of fraud detection and authentication security for their consumers accessing CheckFree's electronic billing and payment applications. CheckFree will run the RSA® authentication system with its own FraudNet(TM) offering, the world's only fraud engine specifically designed to detect and prevent fraudulent electronic bill payment transactions. In addition, CheckFree will utilize the RSA® eFraudNetwork(TM) community, RSA's anti-fraud repository.

"As a key component in CheckFree's Consumer Identity Protections Strategy, RSA provides strong user authentication that complements and extends our own fraud prevention and behind-the-scenes layered security controls," said Ed Sarama, vice president and chief security officer for CheckFree.

CheckFree is committed to implementing sophisticated, state-of-the-art security measures that achieve the highest standards of quality and operational excellence. CheckFree's Consumer Identity Protections Strategy consists of strong consumer authentication, proactive fraud prevention and patented security controls that operate in the background without impacting consumers' online experiences. Introduced in November 2005, CheckFree's FraudNet solution is an automated system that is helping leading financial institutions mitigate risk and combat fraud before it occurs, while making paying bills online even safer for consumers.

"We are delighted to partner with CheckFree to deliver enhanced levels of security to its customers," said Christopher Young, vice president and general manager, Consumer Solutions at RSA, The Security Division of EMC. "Our authentication solution is designed to fight today's online threats as well as tomorrow's, while allowing businesses and consumers to continue to enjoy and reap the benefits of the online channel."

RSA's risk-based authentication technology has been in use for more than 24 months by some of the largest banks in the United States and the United Kingdom, with more than $5 trillion in assets. The technology has proven to be effective, processing millions of transactions with an 80 percent fraud reduction rate and an unsurpassed false-positive ratio.