Chase Launches Global Electronic Payments Service

Chase Manhattan Corp. has launched an international electronic payments service that seeks to leverage the bank's dominance in the automated clearing house business.

The service, called Chase Automated Mass Payments Services, or Champs, is an international automated clearing house service.

Chase is the nation's top originator of automated clearing house transactions and has wholesale banking offices in 52 countries. Experts said the bank is one of the more efficient players at sending electronic payments across national borders.

With the international service, Chase can originate payments for its own corporate customers or on behalf of other banks'.

It also can perform currency conversions, and feed transactions into the local automated clearing house system, said Joan Ragno, vice president at the bank.

Chase's corporate customers can send payments in an electronic data interchange format through the bank's Paysource payment services, through the automated clearing house network, or through some other customized format.

Union Bank of Switzerland is one of the users of the new service, unveiled last month.

"We have several customers currently using Champs, and have many others committed to the service," Ms. Ragno said.

Ms. Ragno said the service addresses the business community's desire for cost-efficient global payment transactions as commerce increasingly becomes global in nature.

"We felt that the market was moving fast, so we elected to go ahead and fulfill our customer's needs," Ms. Ragno said.

Bank officials said the service adheres to guidelines recently established by the National Automated Clearing House Association for cross- border automated clearing house payments.

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