Spectrum Commits to Expanding Bill Payment Options for Consumers and Billers Through Next Generation IFX Switch; Will Also Add Payments to Current OFX Presentment Switch.

Business & Technology Editors

RIDGEWOOD, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 27, 2000

Selects ALLTEL and InteliData to Develop IFX EBPP Switch

Spectrum EBP, L.L.C., a joint venture of The Chase Manhattan Corporation, First Union Corporation and Wells Fargo & Company, today unveiled its technology plan to meet the current and developing needs of the electronic bill presentment and payment marketplace. This includes a commitment to implement the emerging Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) message standard later this year. The company has selected a joint ALLTEL and InteliData team to develop and implement an IFX based next generation, innovative electronic bill payment and presentment platform. ALLTEL will manage the information technology, software development and services needs for Spectrum, with InteliData contributing bill payment technology products and expertise.

The IFX EBPP Switch, enabling different networked systems to talk to each other, will provide a technologically advanced and superior product designed to meet billers' increasingly complex requirements for electronic presentment. Spectrum's next generation IFX switch will provide a richer experience for consumer banking customers, while addressing the deficiencies of OFX in meeting billers' remittance information requirements. For example, the IFX switch will enable billers to offer more payment choices to consumers, such as the ability to separately designate interest and principle payments on mortgage bills.

"Spectrum's introduction of an IFX switch will push the whole industry forward," said Liam Carmody, interim chief executive officer for Spectrum. "Today's EBPP market holds enormous potential, but consumer and biller adoption rates have been hindered by the lack of a complete and trusted end-to-end solution. Spectrum will provide an enormous boost to the banking industry in this respect, because banks' competencies and pre-existing relationships with consumers and billers alike make them a logical and natural intermediary for facilitating EBPP, and Spectrum's technology will address many of the deficiencies that have hindered the growth of EBPP to this point."

As previously announced, Spectrum will meet the current needs of the industry by introducing an Open Financial Exchange (OFX) based payment processing capability in the second quarter of this year. The OFX message standard is widely used throughout the industry, and will meet the needs of Spectrum's initial group of financial institution Biller Service Providers (BSPs) and Consumer Service Providers (CSPs) in providing electronic bill payment and presentment services to their biller and consumer customers.

GartnerGroup estimates that there are 17 billion consumer bills generated and paid annually in the U.S., and that by 2002 15 million U.S. households will be paying bills electronically, and by 2004, one out of every four consumer bills will be viewed electronically.

--  GartnerGroup research also indicates that consumers who bank or
    trade online prefer paying bills and viewing financial accounts at
    their banks rather than major portals by a factor of 5 to 1.

--  Spectrum's three founding institutions and prospective-member
    banks represent over 3.5 million on-line consumers.

--  More than 11 financial institutions have signed letters of intent
    to participate in the network including, among others, Michigan
    National, Comerica, First Tennessee, HSBC USA Inc., Mellon
    Financial Corp., M&I Marshall & Ilsley Bank, Summit Bancorp and
    Wachovia Corp.

IFX Switch to Push Whole Industry Forward

In line with Spectrum's strong commitment to stay abreast of the latest advances in technology and open messaging standards, Spectrum will leapfrog the current generation of presentment and payments technologies with its rollout of a native XML/IFX (eXtensible Markup Language) product. However, OFX will be supported as a service for member financial institutions that have not yet made the transition, allowing all financial institutions to participate.

"It was clear right from the beginning that ALLTEL and InteliData had spent a great deal of time wrestling with the same issues we faced in getting Spectrum up and running," said Carmody. "We are convinced that the combination of ALLTEL's experience with core banking technologies, application systems operations and software development, coupled with InteliData's leadership in bill payment technologies, will provide Spectrum with both the reliability and speed-to-market our customers are demanding."

The IFX EBPP switch will be deployed later this year, enabling Spectrum to support: o Routing and assured delivery of electronic bills and payments between member banks;

--  Synchronization of, and access to, biller directories for all
    member banks;

--  True real-time, "good funds" (XML/IFX based) payments;

--  Direct settlement between member banks;

--  Rich electronic remittance information for billers;

--  An integrated customer claims and dispute resolution system;

--  A system designed to scale beyond a billion annual
    presentment/payment transactions while maintaining 99.98 percent
    availability; and,

--  Continuing support for OFX based bill presentment and payment for
    financial institutions that are not yet ready to make the
    transition to IFX.

"We view Spectrum as one of the most significant banking initiatives in ALLTEL's more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry," said Jeff Fox, president of ALLTEL Information Services. "I believe it will serve as a catalyst for institutions seeking to take competitive positions in the new digital economy.

ALLTEL and our partner InteliData bring the people, processes and technological tools needed to help Spectrum close the electronic billing and payments loop in the kind of controlled and highly reliable fashion that consumers and businesses demand from their financial institutions. We are excited to be a participant in this historic effort."

InteliData's President and Chief Executive Officer, Al Dominick, said, "Spectrum's bank-centric approach represents a seismic shift in the industry. It's really the final stage in the evolution to a more mature, workable model - one which really mirrors the way the check clearing system and the ATM payment systems work today."

About Spectrum LLC

Spectrum is an independent company, fully owned by The Chase Manhattan Corporation (NYSE: CMB), First Union Corporation (NYSE: FTU) and Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC). Spectrum's mission is to provide a secure, open and interoperable infrastructure linking Consumer Service Providers (CSPs) and Biller Service Providers (BSPs) for the purpose of presentment and payment of consumer bills--electronically. Spectrum has defined the operational and technical standards needed to facilitate the interchange of transactions between multiple BSPs and CSPs thus eliminating the need for separate bilateral agreements. In addition, Spectrum seeks to increase the value proposition for its Participants through providing superior service while reducing overall EBPP bill presentment and payment costs.

About ALLTEL Information Services [www.alltel.com]

Ten of the top 25 U.S. banks rely on ALLTEL (NYSE:AT) Information Services' systems for core account processing, and ALLTEL's Advanced Loan System is the retail lending application chosen by more of the top 100 U.S. banks than any other single vendor application. Additionally, more than 34 percent of the total dollar volume of outstanding U.S. consumer loans, including mortgages, is processed on ALLTEL Information Services' software applications.

ALLTEL Information Services, with customers in 55 countries and territories, provides information processing management, outsourcing services and application software to the financial, mortgage and telecommunications industries. ALLTEL is a customer-focused, information technology company that provides wireline and wireless communications and information services.

About InteliData [www.intelidata.com]

InteliData (Nasdaq:INTD), with headquarters in Reston, Va., is a leading supplier of Internet banking and bill payment solutions. Eight of the top 100 U.S. banks are customers of InteliData's current generation of Internet banking products and services, and twenty of the top 100 U.S. financial institutions and financial service providers have chosen InteliData's products and services for their electronic financial delivery. The company's products provide financial institutions with highly scalable and reliable Internet transaction and payment processing solutions that give them total control of customer information and payment processing. These services allow consumers to securely and reliably check account balances in "real-time", view account transaction history, transfer funds between accounts, and do online bill payment to any of the consumers' billers. The Company's products include the Interpose(TM) Transaction Engine, Interpose(TM) OFX Gateway, and the Interpose(TM) Payment Warehouse.