Deal Done, a Fiserv Exec Will Step Down.(Norman J. Balthasar)(Fiserv Inc. acquired CheckFree Corp.)

On the day that Fiserv Inc. completed its acquisition of the Atlanta electronic bill payment provider CheckFree Corp., Norman J. Balthasar, Fiserv's longtime chief operating officer, said Tuesday that he would retire at the end of the month.

Mr. Balthasar said in an interview Tuesday that he would stay on in an advisory capacity for at least the next six months as the Brookfield, Wis., financial technology company begins the CheckFree integration.

Since the $4.4 billion deal was announced in August, the two companies have been working on a road map for combining their offerings, he said. Though he would not set any time frames for specific parts of that trip, he did offer some hints of the direction.

For instance, an early priority is to provide hosted versions of CheckFree's software for small clients, Mr. Balthasar said. "We've certainly got the data network and the scale." In particular, Fiserv plans to offer a hosted version of CheckFree's automated clearing house software, which is used by some of the nation's largest banks.

Further out, Fiserv plans to better integrate the Internet banking software of Corillian Corp., which CheckFree acquired in May, into its core banking applications, Mr. Balthasar said.

The integration, which Fiserv is calling "Project Velocity," because it is meant to accelerate the company's transformation under the Fiserv 2.0 initiative, should be complete in 24 months, he said.

Fiserv executives have said in the past that they expect CheckFree's payments services to spur growth. "The real payoff here is not to save a little money here or there," Mr. Balthasar said. "It's generating additional revenue by improving our services to our clients."

Mr. Balthasar, 60, was a member of the management team that formed Fiserv in 1984. Including the time that he spent with the Florida core-processing service bureau Sunshine State Systems, which later became Fiserv Tampa, he has been with the company for 33 years. He has been a senior executive vice president and the chief operating officer since 2002.

"We think we've created a company that's going to transform the financial services technology marketplace," he said. "I think it's a heck of a combination."

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