Deals of the Month

Hewlett-Packard

In a bold move to further the company's electronic commerce initiatives, HP has acquired POS powerhouse VeriFone for $1.8 billion.

DOW JONES MARKETS

As part of its reinvestment plan, the market data company has inked a deal with Microsoft to enable its systems to operate on NT.

CITIBANK

Citibank is working with VeriFone on a pilot to enable customers to download electronic cash to smart cards from any phone.

FIRST USA Paymentech

The unit of credit card issuer First USA acquired the credit card processing portfolio of CheckFree Corp.

Microsoft

In a move to establish itself as the Internet-TV content source, the software giant has acquired Web TV. Can Web TV banking tools be far behind?

IBM/sun/netscape

The three players, with Oracle's wholly-owned NCI, have created a smart card scheme that allows mobile computer users to easily access network information.

CFI Proservices

The banking software company teamed up with IBM to automate auto- loan processing over the Internet.

Royal Bank of Scotland

A joint venture of the bank and Elite Information Services will allow U.K. legal firms to reconcile client and firm accounts directly with the bank.

MORGAN STANLEY Group

The nation's largest full-service brokerage signed a $3.65 million deal to use Persistence Software in its trading portfolio and risk management systems.

NATIONSBANK

The bank holding company extended until 2005 its credit card portfolio processing contract with Total System Services.