From...

August 3, 1999
Web posted at: 4:12 p.m. EDT (2012 GMT)

by Alexandra Krasne

INTERACTIVE Do you feel comfortable enough with Internet security to pay your bills online? Yes No View Results

(IDG) -- You pull out your credit card and wonder if you'll exceed the limit by purchasing that new laptop you've been dreaming about. Or maybe you want to know which of your frequent-flyer programs is closest to giving you a free ticket to the Bahamas. Wouldn't it be nice to manage all of your bills, credit cards, utilities, and frequent flyer miles on one Web site?

The folks at VerticalOne thought so, and created a free back-end system that can transport your financial and related data to a portal site you designate.

So instead of visiting a separate site each time you want to check your credit card bill, long-distance bill, online investment portfolio, or other data, you can visit one of the participating portal sites. VerticalOne will give you a snapshot of your current account information, as well as furnish account summaries, details, and links to company sites.

Currently, 100 types of account information are available on 7 portals: TheStreet.com, USA Net, Cox Interactive Media, Orchestrate, BellSouth, AnyDay.com, PlanetDirect, and Double Click. You can build your own menu to check your most recent transactions, their dates and descriptions, and links to vendor sites.

"Anything that can aggregate personal information is a killer app," says Casey Jones, director of e-commerce at PlanetDirect. "We had envisioned a similar service and how we would do it, but we threw our hands up and along came VerticalOne. It's going to be interesting to see how they instill confidence in safety. But we're excited about it; they're on to something and we think this will make our site stickier."

Protecting privacy

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The truly sticky part of accessing your accounts with VerticalOne is that you must be prepared to provide detailed (and very private) information, like Social Security numbers and user IDs and passwords for each account you want in the service. For example, to add your Wells Fargo Bank checking account, you have to give your Social Security number, your account number, and a password. The same goes for any other accounts you want to add.

"There will be initial resistance to this type of service, because privacy and security are concerns," says David Card, an analyst at Jupiter Communications.

One way to protect yourself and your sensitive financial data, Card says, is to rotate your passwords, although most people don't do this.

VerticalOne, anticipating user apprehensions and security concerns, has applied for a privacy license from TRUSTe, an independent, nonprofit privacy company, and is certified by BBB Online.

But one benefit of the tight security VerticalOne provides can also be a drawback. Because none of the employees or vendors can access your personal information or passwords, you must re-register if you lose your password.

Eventually users will be able to access bills and account and investment information, and check e-mail anywhere using a cell phone, Palm Pilot, laptop, or PC, says Gregg Freishtat, chairman and CEO of VerticalOne.