Two industry leaders in electronic banking and payment processing are teaming up to launch a new automated clearinghouse (ACH) service for financial institutions and their corporate customers.

CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR) (www.checkfree.com) today announced ACH Outsourcing, the company's new ACH service bureau offering. ACH Outsourcing will be marketed to financial institutions as an alternative to in-house ACH processing. CheckFree selected global information services provider EDS to provide systems infrastructure and network connectivity for CheckFree's ACH service bureau.

Currently EDS provides ACH processing for more than 450 financial institutions and, under the agreement, will make the CheckFree offering a standard part of its extensive service offering to financial institutions.

Currently, more than 2/3 of all ACH transactions are processed through CheckFree's PEP+ application software. The ACH service bureau offering creates an opportunity for financial institutions to move ACH transaction processing from their own systems to CheckFree. As the developer of the leading ACH processing software, CheckFree is in a unique position to take full advantage of the capabilities of the software while providing banks of all sizes virtually unlimited capacity. With the addition of EDS as a technology provider, CheckFree, will offer established, high-volume processing capacity and industry-leading disaster recovery services for ACH processing.

"ACH Outsourcing represents a revolutionary new way to serve the ACH industry," said Lynn Busing, executive vice president of Corporate Financial Services for CheckFree. "By providing an ACH service bureau, CheckFree can fully support the ACH transaction system. And by using the EDS infrastructure, we can provide a world-class service offering."

According to Busing, outsourcing ACH processing volumes will enable financial institutions to focus their system's resources on activities where they can differentiate themselves in the market. For smaller institutions, CheckFree's new service will allow them to offer comprehensive ACH services to their clients without having to make a significant investment in the infrastructure required to deliver those services in-house.

"Outsourcing gives financial institutions another choice for processing ACH transactions," said Elliott McEntee, president and CEO of the National Automated Clearing House Association. "Competitive processing alternatives lead to lower costs and higher quality processing, which, in turn, translates into greater electronic payment volume."

"At EDS, our commitment to customer is first and foremost," said Bobby Grisham, president of EDS Banking and Securities Group. "EDS recognized a need to expand the ACH services provided to our banking customers in order to increase their competitiveness in the financial services industry. Our conclusion was that CheckFree, with their track record in the ACH industry, uniquely possessed the ability to provide the desired solution we sought for our customers."

Checkfree will continue to offer its PEP+ ACH origination software on a license basis and provide annual maintenance for the product but will begin marketing ACH Outsourcing to its existing PEP and PEP+ customers as an alternative to running ACH systems in-house. Currently 172 of the top 200 banks use PEP+ to process ACH transactions.

EDS is a leader in the global information services industry. The company's more than 95,000 employees specialize in applying a range of ideas and technologies to help business and government customers improve their economies, products, services and customer relationships. EDS, which serves customers in 42 countries, reported revenues of $12.4 billion in 1995. The company is independent and publicly owned, and its stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange. EDS can be visited via the Internet at http://www.eds.com.

Founded in 1981, Atlanta-based CheckFree Corporation is the leading provider of electronic commerce services, software and related products for more than 780,000 consumers, 1,000 businesses and 850 financial institutions. CheckFree designs, develops and markets services that enable its customers to make electronic payments and collections, automate paper-based recurring financial transactions and conduct secure transactions on the Internet.

Certain of the Company's statements in this news release contain forward- looking statements, including the statements projecting the numbers of bank service agreements and license sales, that involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the ability of the Company to sign bank service agreements and the ability of the banks and the Company to solicit subscribers for the service, the acceptance of ACH outsourcing by banks, the impact of competitive services and products, the timely implementation of bank service contracts, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Transition Report on Form 10-K for the six months ended June 30, 1996. One or more of these factors have affected, and could in the future affect, the Company's results of operations for the period ended December 31, 1996 and future periods and could cause actual results to differ materially from plans.