ECHO Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Recurring Payments Made Simple: ECHO 
Releases Online Recurring Payment Manager

Agoura Hills, Calif., September 17, 2003 - Electronic Clearing House, Inc. (Nasdaq: ECHO), a leading provider of electronic payment and transaction processing services, today announced the release of the Company's new Recurring Payment Manager (RPM) service. RPM is an innovative web-based payment management program that is an easy-to-use and flexible means of processing recurring payments from customers with weekly, bi-weekly or monthly payment arrangements. RPM can accept either credit cards or checks as a form of payment and ECHO offers RPM as a free service to merchants who process their credit cards and/or checks through ECHO.

The RPM service offers valuable benefits to merchants, non-profit organizations, clubs and service businesses with recurring billing or contribution cycles. Businesses have been quick to adopt recurring payments as they look to reduce costs of billing and collections, guarantee cash flow, reduce mailing costs and have the flexibility to offer convenient payment plans to their customers. Nationwide, research has shown that recurring payments grew from $540 billion in 1997 to $820 billion in 2000, with 69% of consumers paying through at least one automatic payment program. Visa USA estimates growth of such payments to more than $1.1 trillion by 2005. However, up until now, businesses have not had a comprehensive, fully automated platform to manage recurring billing and payment processing.

ECHO's breakthrough RPM platform increases the ease-of-payment for customers, while slashing processing costs and improving collection ratios and cash flows for the business. Any business that bills its customers on a regular basis will be able to benefit from ECHO's RPM service, including charities, health clubs, insurance companies, educational institutions, subscription services and collection agencies. No expensive software or hardware investment is required to use RPM, as all the sensitive customer data is housed within a 100% secure, scalable database on ECHO's servers.

According to Joel M. Barry, CEO of ECHO, "RPM makes it easy for a merchant to set up an automated payment process for subscriptions, memberships, monthly payment plans, or monthly service fees. RPM can accommodate almost any type of recurring billing that a merchant would need to charge their services. From our research, we concluded that RPM's timing capabilities are the best available in the market today, allowing a merchant to set up payments for virtually any interval of time and for specific days of the week or month."

Features of the new service include: Easy-to-use, web-based management of payments with no

additional software required;

• Robust online reporting that shows customer status and enables accurate, timely cash-flow forecasting;
• The most flexible timing options available in the market today;
• Reference data that is controlled by the merchant and allows total integration with their accounting system; and
• Credit cards and/or checks can be the form of payment used.

  RPM is a free service and the merchant pays only ECHO's processing fees for credit cards or check payments, making ECHO's payment processing fees among the most competitive available in the market today. "When you add RPM to ECHO's MerchantAmerica suite of retail and online services, MerchantAmerica becomes one of the premier merchant processing services in the USA," Barry stated.

  The product has successfully beta tested with a number of merchants over a two-month period. One of these merchants, San Luis Mini Storage, San Luis Obispo, California, employed RPM for monthly billing of its customers. "It works great for rent collections," said Peter Nash, owner of the facility. "It was easy to set up and has proven very reliable. It reduces the paperwork we used to process every day to bill the renters, and assures that our customers are billed at exactly the date required."

About Electronic Clearing House, Inc. (ECHO)

Electronic Clearing House, Inc. (www.echo-inc.com) provides a complete solution to the payment processing needs of merchants, banks and collection agencies. ECHO's services include debit and credit card processing, check guarantee, check verification, check conversion, check re-presentment, check collection, and inventory tracking. 

Safe Harbor Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Any statements set forth above that are not historical facts re forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, such factors as fluctuations in demand for the Company’s products and services, the introduction of new products and services, the Company’s ability to maintain customer and strategic business relationships, technological advancements, impact of competitive products and services and pricing, growth in targeted markets, the adequacy of the Company’s liquidity and financial strength to support its growth, and other information detailed from time to time in the Company’s filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investor Contacts:

Donna Rehman, Corporate Secretary 
Electronic Clearing House, Inc.
818-706-8999, ext. 3033 
Agoura Hills, Calif. 
E-MAIL: corp@ECHO-inc.com
URL: http://www.ECHO-inc.com

Crocker Coulson, Partner
Coffin Communications Group
818-789-0100
E-MAIL: crocker.coulson@coffincg.com

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

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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