Banc One to Offer System For Credit Card Processing
Banc One Corp., one of the largest processors of credit card transactions, is offering to sell its processing software to other banks.
The Ohio company this week announced a joint venture with Andersen Consulting to sell a system called Triumph, which the two companies jointly developed over the past two years.
Andersen, which has acquired worldwide marketing rights for the product, is trumpeting the Triumph software as a tool to handle all aspects of the card processing business.
Aimed at Large Issuers
"There are a lot of institutions that are outsourcing today, and that's a great opportunity for Banc One," said Earl Stalter, an Andersen partner responsible for Triumph's development. "But there are also some banks that don't want to give up control."
Large issuers of credit cards are the most likely to install Triumph, Mr. Salter said.
The system, which will be unveiled in part at the American Bankers Association annual bank card conference in Dallas next week, will cost a minimum of $5,000 to license.
Triumph is built around an array of technologies, including image processing, artificial intelligence, and relationship data base systems.
Different Participants
When complete, the system is expected to handle a credit card bank's customer service, card issuance, and merchant processing functions.
One of Triumph's strong points, according to Mark S. Young, a senior vice president at Banc One's card processing unit, is its ability to manage card programs that involve several different participants.
For example, it will make it easier for banks to offer varying interest rates to different cardholder groups or give discounts to select merchants.
|There's been a virtual explosion of relationships between banks, affinity groups, insurance companies, and other service providers," Mr. Young said. "Managing that is increasingly important."
Banc One likes the system so much that it plans to integrate Triumph into its financial card services subsidiary next year.
Card processing has always been a big business at the Columbus-based banking company, which claims to be the third-largest processor nationwide.
The card services unit - the first to process Visa transactions outside California - has almost 3,000 financial institutions with 11.5 million MasterCard and Visa cardholders as clients. The biggest customer is its parent's lead bank, Bank One in Columbus.
