Bottomline's subscription service is new to the United Kingdom and allows small to medium-size companies pay for BACSTEL-IP on a monthly basis. It will encourage many new organizations to use BACSTEL-IP and help expand the market for direct-submitting BACS solutions.

Mike Hutchinson, BACSTEL-IP marketing manager at BACS comments, "We are delighted with this result and believe that by offering BACS users greater choice on how to pay for the BACSTEL-IP software has to be good for our customers, and will help accelerate the migration."

"We launched the BACSTEL-IP subscription service in the spring of this year to provide organizations with the easiest possible transition to BACSTEL-IP and to give them access to additional functionality in the future, such as remittance and check processing at a really low cost," said Peter Fortune, president of Bottomline Europe. "To have reached over 1,300 orders and over 400 live users in just six months proves that our proposition is exactly what organizations need at this time."

Bottomline's range of software approved by BACS and recommended by all the major UK Banks provides extensive payment capabilities for any size company using BACS. The company's unique range of software gives its customers the greatest choice of solutions from full feature enterprise payment platforms to low cost subscription services. With Bottomline's current market share and wide product offering for BACS users, the company is well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the mandatory BACSTEL-IP migration.

BACSTEL-IP is the UK's new technology platform which allows companies to send electronic payments directly to BACS and receive reports from the Internet. Over 50,000 businesses who use BACS to make electronic payments must upgrade their BACS software by 31 December 2005.