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BITS & BYTES
Bills.com Domain Name and
Trademarks Sold for $964,500
by Derek Vaughan, The Hosting News
www.thehostingnews.com
The domain name and trademark of bills.com has been sold
for $964,500 and other considerations. Payment Data Systems,
Inc., an integrated electronic payments solutions provider,
today announced that it has signed a Letter of Intent to sell the
domain to Alivio Holdings, LLC (Alivio), parent of Freedom
Financial Network, LLC (FFN), Freedom Debt Relief, LLC
(FDR) and Freedom Tax Relief, LLC (FTR) of San Mateo,
California.
The intended asset sale has a number of key and important
strategic elements to it:
-- PDS will sell the
assets (domain and
trademarks) of bills.
com and related services
to Alivio for $964,500
dollars.
• PDS will retain all assets of bills.com exclusive of the bills.
com domain and bills.com trademark and gain new revenue.
• PDS and FFN will agree that PDS build and run a private
labeled bill payment site for FFN.
• FFN will pay to PDS, a recurring fee for each subscriber
they acquire into the new bills.com program, and guarantee
$72,000 in minimum subscriber fees to PDS.
• FTR, a wholly owned affiliate of Alivio Holdings, LLC,
will engage PDS for additional services not directly related
to the bills.com transaction. This includes ACH processing,
Returned Check processing, and credit card processing.
• FFN will commit a minimum of $180,000 to be applied
to marketing bill payment services for the new bills.com
website.
• FFN is projecting that the FFN bills.com website, powered
by billx.com, could have over 5,000 subscribers within the
next twelve months.
This projected growth will generate over $25,000 a month in
additional subscriber revenue for PDS.
Additional and important aspects of the transaction include:
• PDS will rename their subsidiary Bills.com, Inc. to Billx.
com, Inc. or similar name.
• All existing customers of the current bills.com service
will be ported to the new billx.com domain without service
interruption.
• PDS, through billx.com, will not lose any existing revenue
as a result of this transaction. In fact, servicing the new FFN
bills.com website will bring in new revenue.
The anticipated effects of the agreement and the associated
follow on transactions are:
• The transaction and related agreements should be accretive
to earnings for PDS over the term of the agreements.
• Positions PDS for positive EBITDA (earnings before
interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) and net income
in the fourth quarter of 2005 and eliminates our debt.
• Positions billx.com to accomplish a number of existing and
new initiatives include:
• Expands and enhances our ability to acquire and deliver
private-labeled sites for banks, debit card issuers, and credit
unions quickly and efficiently. A differentiating and valuable
component of our solution allows these private-labeled sites
to be operated as payment consolidators for all bills not just
their own bills.
• Enhances PDS’ ability to expand delivery of bill payment,
account transfer, and debit-card loading technologies to new
clients, particularly those in the debt management industry
with “customer-facing” needs.
“We are very pleased with this event,’’ stated Michael Long,
Chairman and CEO of PDS. ‘’Clearly the agreements when
fully executed validate the viability of our strategy of private
labeling and create a cash position that significantly changes
our financial profile and opens up new opportunities for PDS.
We expect these agreements to be completed within the current
week.’’
Andrew Housser, Co-CEO of Alivio and Freedom Financial
Network, added, ‘’We are very excited about the acquisition of
bills.com and see this as a key step in enhancing our brand and
profile in the consumer debt management industry. In addition
we look forward to entering the fast growing bill payment space
by partnering with one of the leading players in the industry.’’
To learn more, please visit: www.paymentdata.com or www.
freedomfinancialnetwork.com.
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