Wells Fargo Cuts Short Test Of a Transpoint Bill System

Wells Fargo & Co. temporarily stopped its test of the Transpoint electronic bill presentment system, concluding that its current version "is not the ultimate architecture we plan to implement," said Sharon Osberg, a Wells senior vice president.

The banking company envisions an architecture that "would be built on standards," she said.

The pilot test, originally intended to last about six months and end about now, has been "dark" since just before the holiday season, Ms. Osberg said in an interview.

Wells was the first of eight banking companies testing the system by Transpoint, a bill presentment joint venture of First Data Corp., Microsoft Corp., and Citigroup. Dudley Nigg, now retired from Wells, initiated the project.

Calling standards "an industry issue, not a Transpoint issue," Ms. Osberg said Wells plans to resume testing Transpoint once there is a "substantial upgrade" of the software. Wells also plans to test bill presentment software from Checkfree Corp., she said.

Ms. Osberg said she expects the new Transpoint software, which is to be ready within a month, will have improved bill payment capabilities. The current version, she said, "still is not a vendor solution built on standards" and allowing for "pay-anyone" capabilities.

"The new platform from Transpoint will not get us where we want to be, but we'll be closer" to being able to send bill payments to recipients not able to get them electronically, Ms. Osberg said.

Warren Dent of Denver-based Transpoint said Wells is one of the pilot banks "waiting to look at a much more integrated offering."

Mr. Dent, Transpoint's senior vice president of marketing and business development, said he was "surprised" to hear Transpoint characterized as not built on standards.

"On the bank side, we are working toward using XML and OFX 2.0," he said, referring to two widely adopted technical protocols, Extensible Markup Language and Open Financial Exchange.

"No one is there today" with those standards, he said. "The only place where we don't have the same piece as anyone else is at the biller end."

Mr. Dent said Transpoint's Biller Information Server is based on the Internet's HTML-hypertext markup language standard, not OFX.

Standards are high on Ms. Osberg's list of priorities. She is chairman of a Banking Industry Technology Secretariat steering committee, called Interopera-bill, whose mission is to promote standards for electronic bill payment and presentment.

Mr. Dent said there would be a "five-month gap" before Transpoint would release a version of its system to address another of Wells' grievances-the lack of an integrated pay-anyone capability.

Pay-anyone will be "well integrated" into the Transpoint offering by fall, Mr. Dent said. One option for paying anyone would come from Citigroup, and "we're working on others," he said.

In the past, Transpoint officials have stated that pay-anyone services are not essential for bill presentment. But "any solution with no ability to pay any bill is a partial solution," said Avivah Litan, research director at GartnerGroup. "Transpoint can't win until it has pay-anyone."

Not all the banking companies testing Transpoint are seeking major improvements. The pilot test at KeyCorp is "moving along fine," said Patrick J. Swanick, vice chairman.

Though "not moving as quickly as originally anticipated," he said, "we're not all that concerned because the critical mass has not matured. Transpoint is investing a lot of time and money to ensure its solution is the right one."

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