FYI only!

>  -----Original Message-----
> From:  Lubowski, Andrzej
> Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 12:42 PM
> To: Allen, Paul; Dahir, Victor; Gustafson, Pete; Isaacson, Bond; McEwen,
> Tony; Onoda, John; Pascarella, Carl; Saeger, Rebecca; Thompson,
> Scott(VISAUSA); Vessey, Paul
> Subject: Citi, Wells, Enron, S1 and i2 form a B2B venture
>
> Yesterday,  Citigroup, Wells, Enron, i2 and S1 Corp. formed a new firm
> FinancialSettlementMatrix.com Inc. to streamline buying, selling and
> facilitating payments in business-to-business e-commerce.
> The announcement says that "the new company will connect buyers and
> sellers in e-marketplaces with payment processing, credit and other
> services through multiple participating banks and financial services
> companies."
> While I don't fully understand yet what this new venture will do and how,
> and most importantly, what implications, if any, it may have on Visa,  I
> have a feeling that this announcement is different than the mass of
> publicity seeking B2B plays that we have seen in the last year.
>
> Enron will provide its broadband network, which allows scalability, and
> bypasses the congestion of the public Internet. Enron is highly praised
> for its demonstrated ability to radically reorganize existing industries
> (energy, commodities, risk management, etc.).
> S1 builds customizable Internet financial services platforms and have
> heavyweight partners (IBM, Andersen), and invested clients (Citi, Royal
> Bank of Canada, Andersen, Allianz, FleetBoston, JP Morgan, State Farm and
> Zurich Financial).
> Its chairman and CEO, commenting on the venture said: "So far, various
> companies have separately offered individual financial services such as
> sourcing credit, escrow and payments authentication and processing, but no
> one has offered them all together in a multi-bank model. The lack of a
> complete financial services solution for e-marketplaces has been a major
> inefficiency for B2B e-commerce and a bottleneck for these e-marketplaces,
> restricting their transaction volume. FinancialSettlementMatrix.com will
> offer a full package of financial services in an open system that can be
> seamlessly integrated into any e-marketplace."
>
> My group, working with others, will try to get a better sense of the
> nature of this new beast. On the surface, however, it looks like an
> attempt to create a payment pipeline.