ECHO Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 28, 2001

ECHO ANNOUNCES MERCHANTAMERICA.COM, THE NATION'S FIRST E-COMMERCE, FINANCIAL, AND BUSINESS SERVICE PORTAL DEDICATED JUST TO MERCHANTS!

Agoura Hills, Calif.-- Electronic Clearing House, Inc. (NASDAQ:ECHO) announced today the release of MerchantAmerica.com, an Internet-based portal developed for merchants who process through ECHO. The MerchantAmerica site provides ECHO merchants with a combination of e-commerce, financial and business services not offered by any other processor in the nation.

MerchantAmerica combines three common portals into one for ECHO merchants:

E-Commerce Portal:

•  Inclusion in the MerchantAmerica Merchant Directory that currently contains over 1.4 million merchants across the USA.

• Three-page Internet presence, including a "Home” Page, an "About Us" page, and a "Contact Us" page. Each page is created and editable by the merchant.
• Full Shopping Cart capability, allowing 1) the merchant to list, price and edit their products for sale on the Internet and 2) consumers to view and initiate a purchase transaction from the merchant's site.
• Statistical data management system to track visitors to the merchant's Home Page.
• Full reporting of Internet-based sales and inquiries.
• Full "e-commerce" processing capability, allowing merchants to accept credit cards and/or checks as forms of payment over the Internet.
• Five e-mail accounts for corporate and personal use.
• Easy access to a library of corporate and product images to display on the merchant's Home Page.

Financial Portal:

• Full online reporting and review of all credit card, debit card, and check activity.
• Online real time reports on the status of collection efforts on customer-bounced checks and online check image retrieval capability.
• Same day online notice of all chargeback activity. The merchant has both the review and response capability online, significantly diminishing the paperwork normally seen by merchants in dealing with chargeback activity. 
• Full access to merchant bank account balance information and recent checking account activity.
• Full capability to transfer funds and/or authorize bill payment through the merchant bank account.
• Ability by merchant to add other banks with which the merchant has a relationship that provide online service and thereby personalize MerchantAmerica to their specific banking needs.

Business Service Portal:

• Quick access to and reservation with all major travel services, including airlines, major hotels and car rental agencies.
• Quick connection to all the shipping services, including UPS, Fed Ex, Airborne and more.
• Quick and easy access to all the providers of insurance services, including life, key man, property and liability.
• Quick access to the nation's top providers of various business services and office systems.
• Quick access to national and local news, weather and sports resources.
• A Resource Library of links to thousands of businesses that provide important merchant services, including Internet service providers, network systems sources, point-of-sale hardware providers, telecommunication service providers, office supplies and office furniture providers, security system providers and much, much more. 

MerchantAmerica has been intentionally developed without any advertising banners or cluttered screens of promotional information in order to be best received and utilized each day by merchants.

 Benefits to Non-ECHO Merchants
Listing in the MerchantAmerica Merchant Directory and Home Page capability are offered free of charge to any merchant in the USA while access to all portal capabilities will be available only to merchants who process payment transactions through ECHO. 

 Marketing MerchantAmerica 
A beta program with select ECHO merchants is underway and will be operated for the month of April. A full release of MerchantAmerica to ECHO's total merchant base is scheduled for May 1, 2001. Active promotion of MerchantAmerica to merchants at large will follow shortly thereafter.

Providing a non-ECHO merchant with a free listing in the Merchant Directory and a free Home Page will motivate the merchant to evaluate a possible ECHO processing relationship further.  Once the merchant evaluates ECHO's competitive and integrated credit card, debit card, check and collection services and once the merchant understands the features and capabilities of the full MerchantAmerica site, many merchants are expected to decide to take advantage of a full ECHO relationship.  

Merchants, investors, and general visitors are invited to visit MerchantAmerica.com and take the "Non-Member Tour" to evaluate the design and nature of the MerchantAmerica site. 

 Pricing for MerchantAmerica -  In today's market, a merchant can pay thousands of dollars for an interactive, editable Home Page. In addition, an Internet "gateway" (a point of entry on the Internet to a credit card processor) will cost a merchant in the range of $10 and $25 per month. Hosting services for Home Pages typically cost from $20 to several hundred dollars a month, depending on the size of the site, and providing e-commerce capability to a merchant's Home Page is typically sold for several hundred dollars by many sales organizations and banks. Shopping cart programs can cost merchants from several hundred to several thousands of dollars to design and, many times, the merchants still have no direct control over the management of the site. MerchantAmerica provides all of the above and more for $19.95 per month.

Alice Cheung, CFO of ECHO stated, "Over the past several months of development, we have instituted significant automation in the MerchantAmerica system and we have also allowed merchant control over key areas, both of which lower our expense of operation.  The set monthly fee for MerchantAmerica is expected to generate increased income to ECHO just from releasing it to ECHO's existing base of merchants and we expect to see additional revenue generated from the new merchants who will be attracted to ECHO's electronic payment services due to the release of the MerchantAmerica portal."

 "There are a lot of merchants who want to have a presence on the Internet but don't want to have to spend thousands of dollars to do it. ECHO believes its new MerchantAmerica site provides the best value to any merchant in America. It's a true statement 'If you are a merchant in America, you should be in MerchantAmerica.com.' " stated Joel M. Barry, CEO of ECHO.

Electronic Clearing House, Inc. provides debit and credit card processing, check guarantee, check verification, check conversion, and inventory tracking to over 58,000 retail merchants and U-Haul dealers across the nation. 

To take advantage of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, you are hereby cautioned that this release contains forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations and involve a number of risks and uncertainties.  Actual operations and results may differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements made by the Company.

Media Contact:
Donna Rehman, Corporate Secretary
(818) 706-8999, ext. 3033 or corp@echo-inc.com

Press Releases are also available by calling (800) 233-0406 ext. 3033, or by email to corp@echo-inc.com

2001
2000

Electronic Clearing House, Inc. (ECHO)
28001 Dorothy Drive
Agoura Hills, CA 91301

Phone: (800) 233-0406
Fax: (818) 991-5973
E-Mail: echo@echo-inc.com
URL: http://www.echo-inc.com