Under the terms of the agreement, CheckFree has acquired all of the outstanding shares of Carreker common stock at a price of $8.05 per share, for a total purchase price of approximately $206 million on a fully diluted basis.

Through this acquisition, CheckFree is now a single provider of consulting expertise and solutions for financial institutions across cash, check and ACH systems focused on helping banks create new products and reduce redundant processes across multiple payment channels. The combined organisation will deliver a pragmatic approach to payments convergence that can yield significant value for financial institutions and their customers.

This approach will leverage financial institutions' core processing investments to create solutions that provide an enterprise view of payments and faster deployment of revenue-generating products.

"CheckFree has combined its comprehensive solutions for ACH processing, check conversion and payments reconciliation with Carreker's experience in payments consulting, check payment technology, fraud management, and cash and logistics management to create a leader in payments technology," said Pete Kight, CheckFree Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

The transaction is expected to be modestly dilutive to CheckFree's underlying earnings per share in the current fiscal year (ending June 30, 2007) and in fiscal 2008, and dilutive to GAAP earnings per share in each of
2007 and 2008. CheckFree will provide more information related to the acquisition during its fiscal 2007 third quarter earnings conference call scheduled for 5 p.m. EDT on April 24.