Headlines:
eFunds: We're Over Accounting Issues Amro U.S. Units to Use ImageRPS Billserv Faces Nasdaq Delisting Phone-Web Blend on Way at Corillian Survey: Fee No. 1 EBPP Determinant JPM Chase Details i-Vault Fine-Tuning St. Louis' Commerce Calls Switch Popular
eFunds: We're Over Accounting Issues
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Having restated two years of financial results, eFunds Corp. believes it has straightened out its accounting problems, its chairman and chief executive said Tuesday, but it is cooperating as federal watchdogs continue to look into the matter.
"From our perspective, the accounting issues are behind us," Paul F. Walsh, the chairman and CEO since September, said in an interview.
In documents filed Dec. 2 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the transaction processor restated its results going back to 2000. The central issue was whether the revenues from certain transactions - in particular, a pair of data licensing agreements from 2000 and 2001, together worth $11.2 million - should have been recognized over the lives of the contracts instead of being booked in the quarters when the deals were signed.
Those restatements had the effect of reducing revenues and earnings in those earlier periods and raising the results in later quarters.
The company also made smaller adjustments to the numbers.
The SEC opened an inquiry into some of these issues in March and asked for additional information in October and November. Mr. Walsh said eFunds was cooperating with the investigators.
In the restated results, eFunds reported that its third-quarter net income 22%, to $10.7 million, or 23 cents a share; revenue rose 2% to $144 million.
eFunds owns a network of nearly 17,000 automated teller machines, provides debit processing services and software to merchants and financial institutions, has a risk management business, and provides outsourcing services.
"We are not constrained by a lack of opportunities," Mr. Walsh said. "It's our own ability to execute against those opportunities that is going to be the challenge."
Amro U.S. Units to Use ImageRPS
MOSINEE, Wis. - Wausau Financial Systems Inc. said Monday that ABN Amro Services Co. Inc. had selected its ImageRPS remittance processing system to supply digital imaging to retail lockbox customers of Chicago-based LaSalle Bank and Standard Federal Bank.
"By providing greater information value and more image delivery options, we can assist clients in streamlining payment processing," said Cindy Murray, executive vice president and head of service products at ABN Amro Services. The high-speed image capture is designed to automate exception-item processing, capture full-page documents for clients, and improve receivables management.
ABN Amro Services, LaSalle, and Standard Federal are subsidiaries of Chicago-based ABN Amro North America Inc., the U.S. unit of the Dutch financial company ABN Amro Holding NV.
Billserv Faces Nasdaq Delisting
SAN ANTONIO - Billserv Inc. said it has received a notice of delisting from the Nasdaq National Market for failing to meet its rules on minimum stock price and stockholders' equity.
The Internet billing-services software provider said it would request a hearing, a move that would stay the delisting. It said in a Nov. 27 press release it expected the hearing to be scheduled in 45 days.
Billserv serves 114 billers, including the student-loan company Sallie Mae and Time Warner Cable. Previously it said it would study its strategic alternatives, including selling itself, after it cut jobs and suspended executive salaries. In the third quarter the company's net loss narrowed by 8%, to $2.28 million; revenue fell slightly, to $828,000.
Phone-Web Blend on Way at Corillian
PORTLAND, Ore. - Corillian Corp. announced it will integrate call-center software from Epicor Software Corp. into its Voyager Internet banking software.
Epicor, of Irvine, Calif., said its Clientele Customer Support 8.0 package is the first customer relationship management program to be built on Microsoft Corp.'s .Net framework for Web services. Corillian is integrating .Net into its own Microsoft-based Voyager.
The Epicor deal, announced Nov. 25, was the second in two weeks for Corillian, which is staying close to its roots as an Internet banking software vendor rather while competitors such as S1 Corp. diversify into other channels.
Corillian's other new partnership, announced Nov. 19, is with CashEdge Inc. The New York outfit will integrate its Advanced Aggregation technology into Corillian's applications.
Corillian and CashEdge named $1.3-billion asset Bank of Stockton, Stockton, Calif., as the new software's first client.
Survey: Fee No. 1 EBPP Determinant
ATLANTA - Price counts most in consumer adoption of online bill payment and the provider's identity is a distant second, a survey by Collective Dynamics LLC found.
"We knew going in it was important, but I don't think we thought it was going to be twice as important," said Steve White, a partner and co-founder of Collective Dynamics.
The company surveyed 1,000 Internet users. Twenty-six percent named price and 13% the provider as the most important factor in deciding whether to use electronic bill presentment and payment.
Banks were by far the most popular provider, named by 2.5 times as many consumers as the No. 2 choice, credit unions.
Of the 16% of respondents who said they use EBPP, 70% said they pay no fee for it. Seventy percent who do pay spend $6.95 a month or less.
Users outnumber nonusers 2-to-1 among the nation's most affluent families, and 76% of users visit their bank or credit union Web site at least once a week, versus 40% of nonusers.
Nonusers said their key reasons were its cost, comfort with current payment methods, and concerns about the technology and privacy, the survey found.
Consumers split "amazingly evenly," Mr. White said, on whether they preferred to visit the individual Web sites of billers directly (13%) or consolidated sites, such as a bank's, where they could view a number of statements from different billers (14%).
The largest group, 36%, were squarely in the middle of the 10-point scale, undecided. That points to an opportunity for banks to attract new business and set up cross-selling, Mr. White said.
CheckFree Corp. of Atlanta, Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, and Visa U.S.A. were charter sponsors of the study.
JPM Chase Details i-Vault Fine-Tuning
NEW YORK - J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. described a series of upgrades to its i-Vault digital image archive.
Among the enhancements are large document streaming, so that a user can begin to look at a lengthy document while it is still being transmitted instead of waiting for the entire file to download; the ability to display or print multiple documents at once; the ability to export a "hit list" from a document search into an Excel spreadsheet; and bulk retrieval of images for storage in CD or DVD format.
"Midtier banks across the country would like to be image-enabled, without having to make the capital expenditure themselves," said John S. Bonin, a senior vice president at J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and the business executive at J.P. Morgan I-Solutions, which runs i-Vault.
Morgan Chase allows customer banks to put their own brand on the archive under a "white label" arrangement, either for their own use or for resale to their corporate clients, Mr. Bonin said. It also provides tools that let customers write their own software.
Mr. Bonin said Morgan Chase is the only bank that enables users to search simultaneously in the internal archive and in the shared check image warehouse operated by Viewpointe Archive Services LLC.
Morgan Chase uses the i-Vault technology in about 40 departments. It has sold the service for two years through I-Solutions to customers in financial services, insurance, health care, government, education, legal, and media industries.
St. Louis' Commerce Calls Switch Popular
ST. LOUIS - Commerce Bank's head of consumer banking head said that the November upgrade of its online banking software is getting good reviews from customers.
The principal subsidiary of the $13.2 billion-asset regional bank holding company Commerce Bancshares Inc. switched over the Veterans Day weekend to a new online banking package from Corillian Corp. of Portland, Ore. It previously used software by the Financial Fusion subsidiary of Sybase Inc.
Charles G. Kim, the executive vice president of consumer banking at Commerce Bancshares, said customers now can see summary information on a single screen for a variety of checking, savings, credit card accounts, and the like. Before, users had to go through a series of steps to get to these details.
"People like to be able to get to the information they want more quickly," Mr. Kim said in an interview. "That's a very popular aspect of the new software.".
Commerce also upgraded its online bill-payment service to add presentment of statements, expanding a relationship with CheckFree Corp. of Atlanta, Mr. Kim said.
It was too early to assess customer adoption, but he said he expected good results.
