Midday Update: Vendors Band as ‘Enablers’ of e-Banking

For as long as banking has relied on computers, bankers have set up committees and roundtables where they set aside their competitive differences, collaborate on standards and policy, and kibbitz about matters of collective interest. Usually these meetings are bankers-only — no vendors allowed.

Now a group of prominent technology companies has turned the tables and started a vendors-only group. Populated exclusively by top executives from suppliers of Internet banking technology, the committee came together in January 2000, out of a shared frustration with Wall Street, which had been looking at online banking adoption rates and saying, “Show me the customers.”