First Chicago NBD Corp. plans on Tuesday to become the first bank company offering Intuit Inc.'s BankNow product, an easier-to-use version of the company's Quicken personal finance software.
First Chicago customers who subscribe to America Online will be able to pay bills, check balances, and do other basic banking transactions by downloading free BankNow software stored in space the bank rents from the on-line service.
"The great thing about BankNow is that it's one simple application to use, it's one screen," said Tim Kemp, manager of on-line services at First Chicago. "It's great for the segment of the population who doesn't want more sophisticated financial tracking software."
Mr. Kemp said First Chicago has been testing BankNow among bank employees for the last month. "It's worked beautifully," he said.
Scott Cook, co-founder and chairman of Mountain View, Calif.-based Intuit, made a splash when he announced bank-branded BankNow in June. He said the new product would appeal to "a market segment whose needs have gone unmet up until now."
Nine million people use Quicken, making it by far the most popular personal finance software. Mr. Cook said his company's market research estimated that 40% of the nation's 34 million computer owners who do not use Quicken might use a simpler product that helped them pay bills.
Mr. Cook said in June that BankNow would be available to America Online's more than six million subscribers by late August, and to Internet users by yearend.
An Intuit spokesman, Bob Schettino, said Wednesday that the company is not ready to announce the launching of BankNow.
"Our understanding is that all of the banks that are participating will be launched at once," he said, "and it won't be next week." He declined to say how many banks would participate.
An America Online spokeswoman, Melissa Andrews, said First Chicago's statements were "premature."
But Mr. Kemp said Intuit and America Online had given him the green light to open First Chicago's site to transactions Aug. 27. First Chicago, the nation's eighth-largest bank, with $114 billion of assets, has had a presence in America Online's personal finance area since Aug. 1, 1995.
"We were the first bank on AOL," Mr. Kemp said, "and ever since we've had a site up there, we've had E-mails from customers and prospects who have all been encouraging us to go transactional."
First Chicago already has 20,000 customers who use Quicken and Microsoft's Money software. Michigan residents also can bank at First Chicago through the Prodigy commercial on-line service. And by early 1997, Mr. Kemp said, First Chicago's site on the Internet's World Wide Web will open for transactions.
"We're going to be where our customers are, and there is a significant base now on America Online, and they're asking us for it," Mr. Kemp said. He did not know how many bank customers are America Online subscribers.
Mr. Kemp said the bank's Internet location draws somewhat more traffic than its America Online site but that both are heavily visited by fans of a weekly trivia quiz available at both sites. "We've created a cult with our trivia," he said.
While many banks have focused on providing transactional services through their Web sites, a handful have chosen to offer electronic banking through on-line services instead. The rationale is that many customers are more comfortable using their on-line service than surfing the Internet. An on-line service gives customers connections to the Internet but offers other proprietary features.
