Electronic Payments Week articles from May 2005

Electronic Payments Week archives from May 2005

No One Happy With Federal Money Service Guidance.
May 3, 2005... Recent guidance issued by federal regulators regarding banks and money service businesses (MSBs) left both sides of the issue grumbling at a congressional hearing last week. "We remain skeptical... as to the effects of the guidance,...

GAO Says Feds Not Meeting Their Own Security Standards.(Government Accountability Office)
May 3, 2005... When it comes to throwing stones in glass houses, nobody comes close to the federal government; the sound of breaking glass follows it everywhere. While bank examiners scare the daylights out of banks, and banks respond by, in their...

Water Is Rising Around AirNet.(AirNet Systems Inc. shares)
May 3, 2005... AirNet Systems Inc., already swimming in the deep, choppy waters of the post-Check 21 era, is losing important business just as it's attracting sharks (see Electronic Payments Week, Jan. 25). A group organized by Pacific Coast Investment...

Finger-Pointing Over Identity Thefts.(B J's Wholesale Club Inc., case)
May 3, 2005... The blame game has begun over the recent losses of customer data. The finger-pointing may be on the rise because the involved parties want to avoid blame and legal and financial liabilities. Following last year's data loss at BJ's Wholesale...

Bisys Problems Persist: 10-K Filing Delayed.(BISYS Group Inc.)
May 3, 2005... Bisys Group, Inc., hit by two SEC investigations related to its mutual funds business, said last week it was delaying its SEC filings for 2005's third quarter, that it wouldn't file until an investigation by its audit committee had completed...

Who's Who.(Miro I. Bergman, Davies B. Beller, Richard Hartnack, Joseph Otting)(appointments and promotions at banking industry)
May 3, 2005... * Davies B. Beller moved from the board of Pay By Touch to be its executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective immediately. He'll stay on the board, where he's served since early last year. Beller was last an investment...

The Checklist.(earnings of financial services industry)
May 3, 2005... ACE Cash Express, Inc. [AACE] Ace, a pawnbroker chain, reported net income of $9.9 million, or $0.71 per share, for the first quarter of 2005 on revenues of $78.5 million, compared with net income of $8.2 million, or $0.72 per share, on...

Card Industry Should Brace For 'Disruptive' Changes.(LECG Europe, David S. Evans views)
May 3, 2005... If David S. Evans is right, the card business is about to be engulfed in what he calls a perfect storm of disruptive change from both within and without the industry--a storm that could alter the business more or less permanently. Players...

Six Months Later, Check 21 Is Still Mostly Promise.
May 10, 2005... Last October's debut of Check 21 was spun by its advocates as the dawning of a new age in which creaky old checks would give way to a sleek new streamlined electronic system that would, virtually overnight, change the payments business...

Chinese Payments System: Sleek, Powerful, Advanced.
May 10, 2005... When China's payments system--arguably the world's most modern--is fully operational, it may make that nation the world's most financially competitive. China's payments system, in the works since 1990, is a fully centralized fiber-optic...

Cards, Cash and the Unbanked.
May 10, 2005... The editor of Electronic Payments Week, Andrew Reinbach, muses on the future of a cashless society: Hot on the heels of last week's U.S. Senate hearings on how banks' money laundering concerns have made life tougher for check...

AirNet Update.
May 10, 2005... AirNet Systems Inc., troubled and under siege (see Electronic Payments Week, Jan. 25, May 3), said last Wednesday that it had authorized investment banker Brown Gibbons Lang & Co., "to solicit potential offers to acquire AirNet," leading to...

Retailers Call on Fed to Regulate Card Fees.(Federal Reserve Board)(Brief Article)
May 10, 2005... The Merchants Payments Coalition, which includes the Food Marketing Institute and the National Retail Federation, is urging the Federal Reserve Board to regulate both interchange and discount fees, arguing that the Fed has regulatory...

Is PayPal More Than a Niche Player?
May 10, 2005... Consultant Financial DNA, LLC published a provocative analysis of PayPal at the end of April that suggests that while the eBay unit may indeed be a terrific success story, it may not be able to break out of the online niche it's carved for...

M&A Fever Rising.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2005... Three acquisitions were announced in the past week: CheckFree Corp. bought U.K.-based Accurate Software, which makes reconciliation and exception management products, for $56 million in cash; eFunds Inc. bought National Check Protection...

Who's Who.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2005... * Richard E. Betz was named by Columbia Bancorp to succeed Donald T. Mitchell as chairman. Columbia traditionally rotates its board chairman approximately every five years, and Mitchell will remain on the board. Betz' main business is...

To Survive, Banks Need To Restructure Around Payments.
May 10, 2005... Banks should reorganize themselves around payments, including a revamp of their IT infrastructure, if they want to prosper in the years ahead, according to a recent paper issued by The Economist Intelligence unit. The paper, sponsored by...

New To Market.
May 10, 2005... * Alogent Corp. is using SunTrust Banks' remote deposit automation product for corporate and small business check truncation. This follows on SunTrust's basing its check imaging and data exchange platform on an Alogent product last December....

The Checklist.
May 10, 2005... eFunds Corp. [EFD] eFunds reported net income for the first quarter of 2005 of $13.2 million, or $0.26 per share, on net revenue of $114.2 million, compared with net income of $9.4 million, or $0.19 per share, on net revenue of $105.7...

Interchange Sparks Heated Exchange at Fed Meeting.
May 17, 2005... Regulators and industry figures met in Santa Fe in the first week of May for what the meeting's sponsor, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, had hoped would be a civilized discourse on interchange fees and the role, if any, for...

Major Image Exchanges In Interoperability Talks.(check imaging exchanges )
May 17, 2005... The major check imaging exchanges are negotiating to align their technical standards, which would allow them to exchange check images between each other instead of merely within their own operations. The result when all arrangements are...

Amex Legal Settlement Unravels.
May 17, 2005... American Express Co.'s settlement of a California class action lawsuit, reached nearly two years ago, is unraveling amid accusations by the presiding judge that the company misled the court about its business practices. As a result, Amex may...

M&A, Deal Activity Heats Up.(merger and acquisitions; Vigo Remittance Corporation)
May 17, 2005... As predicted in this publication last week, investment bankers are poised to make a killing this year selling companies to each other. This activity itself should come as no surprise: The logic of business in general militates in favor of...

Hypercom in Midst of Major Adjustments.
May 17, 2005... Following on the retirement of Chairman Chris Alexander and the departure of Chief Financial Officer John W. Smolak at the end of March, Hypercom Inc. issued an unusual 10-Q filing, commendable in its transparency, that indicates that the...

Who's Who.(Fiserv CBS Worldwide; G-10's Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems)(appointment)
May 17, 2005... * Tony Catalfano was named president of Fiserv CBS Worldwide. He was previously was president and chief operating officer of another Fiserv unit, Fiserv EFT. (Contact: Fiserv, 262-879-5966) * Stephen S. Cole joined the board of Online...

European Payments System Under Construction.
May 17, 2005... The European Union includes about 100 million more people than the United States and about the same gross domestic product, and on paper, Europe should be able to challenge U.S. economic dominance. It has, for instance, excellent...

New To Market.(eBank Systems Inc.)
May 17, 2005... * ACI Worldwide says that Helsinki-based FreeStar Technology Corp. is powering Rahaxi Processing Oy's Internet payment gateway. Separately, ACI says Banque de l'Agriculture et du Developpement Rural, Algeria's largest bank, went live with...

The Checklist.(revenue data)
May 17, 2005... AirNet Systems, Inc. [ANS] AirNet reported net income of $1.57 million, or $0.15 per share, on net revenues of $49.89 million for the first quarter of 2005, compared with net income of $316,000, or $0.03 per share, on revenue of $40.47...

Who Will Be Impacted Most If Interchange Rates Fall?
May 24, 2005... Considering all the shouting about the future of interchange, casual observers could be excused if they thought the issue meant the end of life as we know it (see Electronic Payments Week, May 17). But, at least as far as stock performance...

U.S. Payments System Struggles to Catch Up.
May 24, 2005... The U.S. payments system is a lot like the U.S. government--fragmented and inefficient by design--just like the European and Chinese systems reflect their governmental traditions. The American political system was designed around the idea...

Brits Delay Payments to Minimize Phishing Losses.
May 24, 2005... Americans are an impatient people, and in the world of online banking this can result in phishing losses. Banks tend to be eager to please, and to not offend customers by making them wait. If a crook obtains a customer's password and PIN,...

Veiled Threat by OCC?(Julie L. Williams, United States. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency)
May 24, 2005... Julie L. Williams, the acting Comptroller of the Currency, testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs May 17 about credit card industry marketing and disclosure practices, and in the process gave new meaning...

Fed Reports Its Numbers.(United States. Federal Reserve Board)
May 24, 2005... The Federal Reserve Board has issued its 2004 Annual Report, and buried in it--as you might expect--were some interesting numbers. The report says that in 2004, the Fed collected some 13.8 billion checks worth $15.1 trillion, and also...

Who's Who.(Russell S. Gould, Drew Gross, Allen B. Morgan Jr., Jorge M. Perez, Spence L. Wilson, Harry W. Witt, Harry W. Witt)(appointments)(Brief Article)
May 24, 2005... * Russell S. Gould was hired as senior vice president for business development and strategic partnerships in California, and Drew Gross was named managing director and head of Global Foreign Exchange, by Wachovia Corp. (Contact: Wachovia...

Realities of Computer Crime Call for Working Partnerships.
May 24, 2005... In the late 1990s, the federal government and private industry worked together to fight cyber-terror--concerted attacks on the nation's critical infrastructure, including its financial infrastructure--by hackers, many of them trained by...

New To Market.(meshed brief)
May 24, 2005... * American Express says it's modernized its Travelers Cheques, replacing them the American Express Travelers Cheque Card, a prepaid, re-loadable card. (Contact: American Express Co., 212-640-6221) * Carreker Corp. says BISYS Group Inc....

The Checklist.(earnings of banking industry)
May 24, 2005... Advanta Corp. [ADVNA] This credit card issuer says its Advanta Business Receivables Corp. unit priced a $250 million, three-year note business credit card securitization, backed by originated by its Advanta Bank Corp. They were priced at...

U.S. Bank Eyes Expansion Overseas and In New Markets.(U.S. Bancorp.)
May 31, 2005... U.S. Bancorp may be the nation's sixth largest bank holding corporation. But if you live on the coasts, it's the biggest bank you never heard of, eclipsed in the public imagination by the likes of CitiGroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, or Bank of...

Online Banking Can Survive Wave of Hacking Incidents.
May 31, 2005... The past several months' headlines seemed to have been designed to threaten the whole idea of doing business online. Between the customer data problems at ChoicePoint, Bank of America, and Lexis/Nexis, the massive Shadow Crew bust last...

Financial War on Terrorism Detailed by FinCEN's Fox.(Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)
May 31, 2005... William J. Fox, director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Financial Services Committee on May 26 and released a few new details about the...

British Regulators Speed Up Electronic Payments.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2005... A week after several large UK banks said they would delay online payments by a day to minimize phishing and other online fraud losses, the governments' Payment System Task Force issued regulations last week designed to reduce clearing times...

Fighting the Enemy Inside the Gates.
May 31, 2005... For years, computer security experts have touted the threat from insiders to be greater than threats from hackers when it comes to protecting computer systems. Now, what may come to be considered the most detailed study yet about such...

Who's Who.(appointments at Vocent Solutions Inc., Bank of New York, and Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle)(Brief Article)
May 31, 2005... * George Devitt joined Vocent Solutions Inc. as vice president, sales and marketing. He was last managing director of Polaris Advisory Group. (Contact: Vocent Solutions, Inc. 650-316-3000) * John M. Dowd was named head of the Bank of New...

New To Market.
May 31, 2005... * Acxiom Corp. says that Juniper Bank, a Barclays Group unit, will be using Acxiom's business intelligence products and customer information infrastructure for Juniper's customer acquisition and analytics operations. (Contact: Acxiom,...

The Checklist.(financial reports of Equitex Inc. and Royal Bank of Canada, Northwest Bancorporation Inc. acquires Equinox Financial Corp.)
May 31, 2005... Cash Systems, Inc. [CKN] This gambling-related ATM and check cashing operator reported net income of $238,000, or $0.01 per share, on revenues of $13.7 million for the first quarter of 2005, compared with net income of $304,000, or $0.02...