Electronic Payments Week articles from July 2005

Electronic Payments Week archives from July 2005

Interchange Class Action Lawsuit Finally Filed.
July 5, 2005... War over the future of the credit card business was formally declared in a Connecticut federal courtroom on June 22, in the form of a long-expected class action lawsuit over interchange fees. Unlike the recent lawsuit over debit cards...

SimPay Bites the Dust While M-payments Keeps Rolling.(financial services industry)
July 5, 2005... SimPay, the ambitious effort by a consortium of European cell phone operators to create an interoperable mobile payments platform, was shut down June 24 when Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile unit, one of its founding members, pulled out of the...

BofA Buys MBNA.(Bank of America)(MBNA Corp)
July 5, 2005... The Bank of America bought MBNA Corp. last Thursday for $35 billion in cash and stock. The deal, which came right on the heels of BofA's $2.5 billion acquisition of 9 percent of China Construction Bank, makes BofA the nation's largest...

CardSystems Scandal Prompts Lawsuit.
July 5, 2005... It must follow, as the night the day: the CardSystems Solutions Inc. scandal has produced a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit, brought in California Superior Court in San Francisco on June 24, was filed by two law firms on behalf of a...

Hypercom Reorganizes to Trim Expenses.(Brief Article)
July 5, 2005... Hypercom Corp., which has been struggling with potentially crippling market and legal issues (see Electronic Payments Week, March 15), said last week it was reorganizing in an effort to save about $15 million in overhead by eliminating 20...

Regulators Issue New Examination Guidelines.(Federal Financial Insti-tutions Examination Council)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2005... The Federal Financial Insti-tutions Examination Council issued a new bank examination manual last week, featuring a set of uniform examination guidelines. The manual appeared following months of complaints from banks that examiners were...

Who's Who.(Malcolm Gillis appointed to Electronic Data Systems Corp., appointed to Meta Financial Group and MetaBank and Jon Halfhide appointed to Redding Bank of Commerce)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2005... * Malcolm Gillis was named to the board of EDS. He was president of Rice University for 25 years. (Contact: EDS, 972-605-1624) * J. Tyler Haahr was named CEO of $795.8 million Meta Financial Group and MetaBank, based in Iowa, replacing...

Online Fraud: Banks Should Be More Proactive.
July 5, 2005... Most banks are being passive in the face of phishing and other online fraud but should be more proactive, says Avivah Litan, vice president and research director of Gartner, Inc. "Not all of the banks are being passive; Bank of America...

New To Market.(Fidelity Information Services, eFunds Corp.HealthLogic Systems Corp.'s contracts with banking industry)
July 5, 2005... * Bank of America (BofA) says it has a deal with HealthLogic Systems Corp. to automate explanation of benefit (EOB) data capture and deliver it in a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant file. A BofA lockbox...

The Checklist.(Advanta Corp., AirNet Systems Inc. and Bottomline Technologies Inc.'s securities data)
July 5, 2005... Advanta Corp. [ADVNA] This credit card company says it priced a $225 million series of five- year senior notes based by business credit card receivables at 13 basis points over one-month LIBOR. The issue should close on or about July 7....

Diebold Seeks To Recover From Poor ATM Sales.(Automatic Teller Machines)
July 12, 2005... Diebold Inc. is in a bit of a hole, but it hopes it can get out of it before incurring huge losses. "All companies can make mistakes, and this company has been pretty straightforward about talking about the issues," says Megan...

Data Treasury Corp. Settles With Chase, Pursues Others.(J.P. Morgan Chase and Co.)
July 12, 2005... Claudio Ballard seems about to be a wealthy man. The 37-year-old Long Island, N.Y., founder of Data Treasury Corp. settled two lawsuits in the past month, one with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and another with NetDeposit Inc., a unit of Zions...

OCC Memo Reveals Wells Fargo's Deficiencies.(Comptroller of the Currency)( Wells Fargo & Co. )
July 12, 2005... Legitimate questions of whether all banks are equal under the law in the eyes of federal regulators have been raised by a memo written by Carolyn Amundson, enforcement and compliance counsel of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency...

CardSystems Hires Security Advisor.(contract of CardSystems Solutions Inc. and AmbironTrustWave)(Brief Article)
July 12, 2005... CardSystems Solutions Inc., the third-party credit card processor that was hacked, and thereby potentially compromised as many as 40 million credit cards, has hired AmbironTrustWave, an information security advisory firm created this March...

Who's Who.(Alvin D. Kang appointment as chief financial officer by Nara Bank)(Stephen J. Corcoran promoted as senior vice president of Webster Financial Corp.)(Regions Financial Corp. names Jackson W. Moore as its Chief Executive Officer)(Brief Article)
July 12, 2005... * Stephen J. Corcoran was promoted to senior vice president of Webster Bank, N.A., a unit of $17.4 billion Webster Financial Corp., based in Connecticut. (Contact: Webster Bank, N.A., 203-578-2287) * Harvey E. Johnson, Jr. was elected...

Accounts Receivable Departments Get More Attention, Rightly So.
July 12, 2005... Banks and other financial vendors would be smart to help corporate accounts receivable departments acquire the modern tools of the trade, says Jeffrey Pikulik, vice president and director of payments research at Aberdeen Group. "Data...

New To Market.(credit card account features from Cardservice Int'l in Avanquest's MySoftware line)(Commerce Bank of Washington N.A.'s ATMs at pharmacies in Washington)(e-onlinedata Inc. strikes a deal with Total Online Solutions Inc.)
July 12, 2005... * Avanquest Software says it's using merchant credit card account features from Cardservice Int'l in Avanquest's MySoftware line of small business productivity products, beginning in August. (Contact: Avanquest Software, 305- 529-1944) *...

The Checklist.(First Regional Bancorp's sales and earnings)(MasterCard International Inc's sales and earnings)(Mercantile Bank Corporations sales and earnings)(Brief Article)
July 12, 2005... Bank of Santa Clarita [BSCA] This community bank says that in the second quarter of 2005, it had a net earnings loss of ($457,000), or ($0.27) per share, on revenue of $377,000, compared with net loss of ($538,000) on revenue of $222,000...

Merchants File Second Interchange Lawsuit.(Kroger Co. files case against Visa International)
July 19, 2005... A coalition of merchants led by supermarket giant Kroger Co. has filed the second in what seems destined to be a blizzard of federal antitrust lawsuits aimed at driving down or even eliminating interchange fees. The suit, filed July 14...

Two-Factor Authentication: Too Much Or Too Expensive?(maintaining online data security in banking industry)
July 19, 2005... Consumers may be worried about whether it's safe to do business-- including their banking--online. But that's nothing compared with banks' worries that if they make it too difficult for customers to sign on to their Web sites-- in order to...

Good News, Bad News for OCC.(Comptroller of the Currency)
July 19, 2005... It was one of those weeks for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). More bad news emerged about the agency's decision not to pursue a cease-and-desist order against Wells Fargo & Co. over problems in its anti- money laundering...

Diebold Wins In Court.(Financial & Security Products Association)(Brief Article)
July 19, 2005... Diebold Inc. won an important ruling last week in an antitrust lawsuit brought against it last October by the Financial & Security Products Assn. (FSPA), a trade group for ATM maintenance companies. The lawsuit alleged that the company was,...

Correction.
July 19, 2005... Two weeks ago, Electronic Payments Week misspelled the name of the chairman of Debitman Card Inc. The correct spelling is John K. Lannan. We regret the mistake. [Copyright 2005 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]

Who's Who.(appointments)(Brief Article)
July 19, 2005... * Thomas N. Castronovo and James A. Ruckstaetter have been hired as chief marketing officer and chief credit officer, respectively, of PrivateBancorp, Inc., a Chicago area bank specializing in servicing high net worth individuals. Both have...

U.S. May Not Need Another Online Payment Venue.
July 19, 2005... At about the same time last month that Interac, Canada's debit card system, said it was launching an online debit platform that allows Internet buyers to buy products online without sending the merchants any account information, NACHA said...

New To Market.(Union Bank of California will use CGI-AMS Inc.'s Proponix trade finance platform)(Certegy Inc. is integrating its services)(Bottomline Technologies signs license distribution agreement with Oracle Corp.)
July 19, 2005... * Bank of America says it extended its rollout of its SiteKey two-factor authentication system to Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. (Contact: Bank of America, 415-622-6397) * Bottomline Technologies says it signed an embedded...

The Checklist.(BankUnited Financial Corp.)(Fifth Third Bancorp.)(First Data Corp.)(quarter revenues)
July 19, 2005... BankUnited Financial Corp. [BKUNA] This $9.9 billion parent of BankUnited FSB says that for the quarter ended June 30, it had a third-quarter net loss of ($14.8 million), or ($0.50) per share on revenue of $42.47 million, compared to net...

Wal-Mart Drops The Other Shoe.(Wal-Mart Stores Inc. gets banking license)
July 26, 2005... Wal-Mart Stores Inc. made its long-expected stab at getting a banking license last week, filing in Utah for an industrial loan bank charter, which allows an institution to conduct limited banking operations nationwide. The company estimates...

Squeezed From All Sides,OCC Soldiers On.(Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Bank Secrecy Act )
July 26, 2005... At the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the past year must seem like the winter of its discontent. Whether the future turns to glorious summer is a matter of speculation. After complaints from all sides about the agency's...

CardSystems Turns Into Industry Scapegoat.(data security)
July 26, 2005... CardSystems Inc.'s chief executive John M. Perry must be asking himself if he shouldn't have chosen a less risky profession--commando, for instance. In two months, Perry has gone from running a quiet credit card processing business with...

Who's Who.(appointment of Alfonse M. D'Amato in Signature Bank)(appointment of Howell McCullough in U.S. Bancorp)(appointment of Michael J. Oliver in Asia Payment Systems Inc)(Brief Article)
July 26, 2005... * Alfonse M. D'Amato, the former U.S. Senator from New York, joined the board of Signature Bank, effective July 20. D'Amato is managing director of Park Strategies LLC, a business consulting firm he founded when he retired from the Senate in...

The Checklist.(Income of Bank of New York )(Income of Capital One Financial Corp)(Income of Certegy Inc)
July 26, 2005... The Bank of New York Co. [BK] The Bank of New York (BoNY) reported that in the previous quarter, it had net income of $398 million, or $0.52 per share, on revenue of $1.726 billion, compared with net income of $371 million, or $0.48 per...

Intelligent Loyalty Programs Help To Maximize Returns.
July 26, 2005... Loyalty programs can more than double credit card use and fee income for banks. But if they were really smart, issuers would use the information buried in their transaction data to design systems that reinforce loyalty behavior among their...