Sterling Commerce Announces New Consumer Payment Consolidation Software for Banks; VECTOR:Biller Lets Banks Solve Costly Manual Handling of Consumer Payments

Business Wire, Sept 16, 1996

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 16, 1996--Sterling Commerce (NYSE: SE) has announced the availability of new PC-based electronic bill payment and remittance software that allows banks to save time and money for their corporate customers and generate new fee income for themselves.

Called VECTOR:Biller, the new product is stand-alone PC-based software that banks can use to receive consumer bill payments and electronically supply billing companies -- their corporate customers -- with a consolidated financial settlement of consumer payments and the remittance data associated with those payments in electronic formats. VECTOR:Biller can be used by banks of any size, from small- and medium-sized banks to the largest money-center institutions.

"VECTOR:Biller offers banks new fee-generating opportunities and the chance to strengthen their relationships with their corporate customers. It's a highly desirable service to offer," said Bob Heard, vice president for marketing and business development for Sterling's Banking Group. "VECTOR:Biller is the`back-end' of the consumer bill-payment process. It enables true end-to-end electronic bill payment between banks and their biller/corporate customers, saving both banks and billers time and money by eliminating the paper-based 'check-and-list' functions they now perform."

VECTOR:Biller allows a bank to receive an electronic file from Visa's ePay, MasterCard's RPS, or files in any other home banking or bill-payment service format and translate it into payments and remittance information that can then be sent on to the bank's corporate customer, the biller. Payments to the biller can be made in ACH, CCD, CIE and CTX in any payment format.

VECTOR:Biller allows payments and remittance information from customers to be consolidated into one payment to the biller, or into individual payments corresponding to the one made by each consumer. The delivery of remittance information is flexible. Banks can supply their billers with payment and remittance information either directly, through a value-added service provider such as Sterling Commerce's COMMERCE:Network, the Internet, or by fax or mail.

VECTOR:Biller offers banks the ability to give its corporate biller customers a fully electronic method of handling consumer bill payments. Today, billers typically receive one check, plus a list of consumer-initiated electronic payments from the consumer's bank, which must then be manually cross-checked. With VECTOR:Biller, banks now have an easy, fully automated way to solve this long-standing, time-consuming reconcilement problem for their biller customers.

VECTOR:Biller is based on proven components from Sterling's market-leading VECTOR:Connexion system that is currently used by more than 85 percent of the fully FEDI-capable banks in America.

Sterling Commerce (NYSE: SE) is a subsidiary of Sterling Software (NYSE: SSW) and has its headquarters in Dallas. Sterling Commerce is a global provider of electronic commerce software products and network services that enable businesses to engage in business-to-business electronic communications and transactions. Sterling Commerce has been providing electronic commerce solutions for over 20 years, and has over 20,000 customers worldwide.

Sterling Software and its subsidiaries provide software products and services worldwide for electronic commerce, applications management and systems management, as well as highly technical professional services for the federal government. Sterling Software, with its headquarters in Dallas, is one of the 10 largest software companies in the world with 3,600 employees, 75 offices worldwide and an installed base of almost 40,000 customer sites in over 60 countries.

CONTACT: Sterling Commerce, Dallas

Media: M.A. Hancook, 972/788-2580

Investors and Analysts: Dawn Wheeler, 214/891-8660