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Yes, I work here. Should free up a bit more time for you to be EVEN LAZIER! :)

Checkfree.com

IMO this is just another case of the media sesationalizing news to drive up ratings.

No... it isn't. Allow me to elaborate:

My employer uses an electronic payment system provided by iPay. The other day, I was required to "re-regster" due to some "security enhancements". A long story short: the registration process hick-upped and I was able to pull up some serious information (accidentally) on *other people*. I could have done some damage with this info. Much damage. But instead, I called up, reported the event and switched back to the old mail-it-to-me method of compensation. It is worth it.

Another event happeed recently - I registered for DTE Energy for auto-deduct/electronic billing. After I had some trouble with the freakin' way the site handles cookies, I would up calling tech support. It turns out that DTE simply uses CheckFree.com to provide these services. In the process of registration, DTE simply *stole* my MSN Passport (it did not notify me and I had no idea that I had a checkfree account until the tech told me). When the tech support agent told me that my logon to checkfree was *my freaking MSN passport*, I bitched like hell and asked him to cancel my account. I mean, WTF? Do they think that I'd be happy to trust *Microsoft* with my checking account?

I could go on... The bottom line is that nothing is safe anymore. Democracy and Capitalism are mutally exclusive.

Citibank sucks. Try this instead of c2it.com.

This might help you out.

Well never fear folks, it's not going to be Microsoft doing the wonderful 'innovating' in this field of computing. Why would I say that? Take a look at this press release from a year ago: CheckFree and TransPoint Complete Merger

(Transpoint was a joint venture between Microsoft, Citicorp, First Data, and a few other minor players. Unfortunately, their solution to online banking never really got rolling, and Checkfree essentially bought 'em out. I kinda doubt Microsoft will end up making big strides in the financial software arena, as that has never been their specialty.)

I would suggest looking into implementing NPC instead of OFX support though. Just my opinion on this, but OFX sort of sucked for us to support. I won't go into technical (possibly proprietary reasons), but I believe NPC is more flexible. Don't quote me on it, just throwing out my worthless $.02 for general consumption.

On another note, since we do have sort of a merger thing going on with our old rival (now partner) Transpoint, which is a joint venture with Microsoft and First Data, it might be more advantageous to go with the OFX model for overall scalability, but that's more of a question for our sales departments I guess.

I'm not trying to plug my company too much here, mainly I too would like something as solid as Quicken2k for Linux as I am finding I enjoy using Linux much more than Windows as of late. I haven't totally ditched Windows for just this reason (lack of a really solid financial tracking tool). I've heard of GNUCash recently, but haven't yet had the chance to try it out. My question is:

Since this is under the GPL license, and a lot of online banking is under proprietary licenses (my company, banks, PayPal, etc.), do you think that any type of medium can be worked out to incorporate the two licenses into a fully functional online banking type product. (I realize you're not a lawyer, but just wanted to know if any of your developers have explored this type of difficult question, and come up with answers and/or solutions).

Sorry for the shameless plug, but I hate snail mail spam just as much as the next /.er and this is one alternative that has cut down on my utility bill spam ads. (Cause now I don't get snail mail bills full of ads from those utilities).

And it was so well received that they decided to sell it to CheckFree:

Here's the link

Not only do you go with a more reliable company like Microsoft, which will be able to make deals with far more companies for online bill paying because of it's size, but you get to benefit from microsoft's experience and the superior security of it's operating system.

From SecurityPortal.com:

Red Hat did a better job of handling the "full disclosure" bug releases, usually solving these problems in under 2 weeks, with 67 days being the extreme case. Microsoft usually took over 3 weeks to patch "full disclosure" bug releases, with a worst case of 146 days.

Here's the link

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Where do you want to go, toady?

I think that way down underneath this feature there is an engine from CheckFree. I am not sure that PayTrust has anything to do with it. They certainly don't mention it on their web site.

I did some consulting with Checkfree (on one of its other products) 2 years ago when the bill payment and yahoo deals were first getting going.

I've been using checkfree for about six years now, originally as a Compuserve-based add on to Quicken, now as a software-agnostic web interface. The cost is $10/month, and I only use the basic bill-paying features, but I have been very pleased with their product.

I have changed banks twice, with no difficulties, and migrated from the Quicken/MS centric dialup interface (compuserve) to the web interface, also with no difficulties.

If a payment goes astray, they will track it down for you (every time this has happened it has been an accounting error on the creditor's side - Ameritech and Commonwealth Eddison (typical old-school monopoly utility companies) were notorious for this, but the folks of checkfree did the legwork in getting the issues resolved.

The web login insists that you be 128-bit capable, which is reassuring (as there were a couple of times I would have unknowingly connected using 40-bit encryption).

All in all very nice, especially when you are travelling for seven months strait (as I used to do), or have decided to take a month off and go on safari with no possible contact to the western world. Even just residing in the States, one gets very used to the convenience of having those recurring payments (loan and mortgage, for example) queued up automatically each month.

Your comment about printing reminds me of the main item keeping ME from converting to Linux: the need for a version of Money or Quicken or the like. (Perhaps someone should start a list of all the "Windows anchors that keep us from adopting Linux.")

I run virtually my entire financial life with Micro$oft Money now (paying bills automatically via CheckFree, downloading stock quotes, updating my investment portfolios, etc.) In fact, this represents one of the few real-world purposes for which I frequently use my PC.

Until some replacement exists for Linux -- or until the Windows version will run successfully under an emulator for Linux -- I have no choice but to remain a Windoze user.

The Crayfish

CheckFree, which I've used for years and, others' problems notwithstanding, I've been extremely happy with (they've even written letters on my behalf to idiot creditors) sells a web-based service that will work with any bank. There's an enrollment form here. The really cool thing about using CheckFree is being able to sit down once or twice a month and schedule bills to be paid exactly on the due date... no more sending checks early because you don't want to be bothered with it later.

CheckFree, which I've used for years and, others' problems notwithstanding, I've been extremely happy with (they've even written letters on my behalf to idiot creditors) sells a web-based service that will work with any bank. There's an enrollment form here. The really cool thing about using CheckFree is being able to sit down once or twice a month and schedule bills to be paid exactly on the due date... no more sending checks early because you don't want to be bothered with it later.