Headlines:
Scotiabank Expands Its E-Bill Services MC Reconsidering Pulse Debit Pact At PNC, Intranet Career Development Certegy Teams Up With Pay by Touch Wausau to Offer Saflink Security Royal of Scotland Forms New Division
Scotiabank Expands Its E-Bill Services
Bank of Nova Scotia has begun to use a service called epost from EPO Inc. - a unit of Canada's national postal service, Canada Post - to deliver electronic statements to people who bank with it online.
The service, which the Toronto bank announced Tuesday, enables it to deliver mail, including bills and statements, over the Internet from a wider range of companies.
Bank of Nova Scotia said it will now be able to send bills from about 100 companies. Many of those it will be able to serve through epost were customers of Emergis Inc., a Montreal company that EPO bought in July.
Consumer customers of the $279 billion-asset Canadian bank can register on its Web site to receive the bills. Bank of Nova Scotia has 1.4 million online banking customers in Canada. They did 152 million transactions through its online service last year, 42% more than in 2003, according to its annual report.
Canada Post started the Toronto-based epost service in 1999. It is offered directly through epost.ca. The service was first offered through a bank's online bill pay service in October 2000, by Bank of Montreal of Toronto.
MC Reconsidering Pulse Debit Pact
MasterCard International said it is rethinking its relationship with Pulse EFT Association now that the debit network has been acquired by Discover Financial Services.
MasterCard said in a press release Wednesday that it would "determine whether the new 'Discover/Pulse' organization may continue as a principal debit licensee and as a sponsor of financial institutions into debit MasterCard, Maestro, and Cirrus programs."
The Purchase, N.Y., card company also said it would decide whether to keep Pulse's logo on the back of its debit cards. Banks often display multiple debit network symbols on the backs of their cards.
Discover, a Riverwoods, Ill., unit of Morgan Stanley, bought Pulse last week for $311 million.
At PNC, Intranet Career Development
PNC Financial Services Group Inc. plans to use an intranet education system for employee career development.
Nickolas Certo, the senior vice president of PNC's national call center, said he will use the system to guide personal development plans for its 980 employees. It will help workers and their supervisors track their progress through PNC's twice-annual "commitment and alignment" employee-appraisal sessions, he said.
Deborah Smyth, PNC's director of performance improvement and learning, said the company also plans to offer the employee development program in its consumer lending and business banking areas, as well as throughout its branch network.
The Pittsburgh banking company has been using the system, licensed from Pathlore Software Corp. of Columbus, Ohio, since 2000. At first it was used to orient new employees and provide training in new products. Uses were later expanded to include access for 13,000 employees to a range of courses, most of them developed in-house, Ms. Smyth said. The topics range from the basic - such as using the telephone system or building sales skills - to training on specific products, such as home equity loans or credit cards, she said.
The emphasis has been largely on individual skills or products, Ms. Smyth said. But the system's ability to track the courses that workers have taken provides an opportunity to use it for staff development, she said.
Mr. Certo said computer-based training enables workers to work through a training session in the work environment. "It's very liberating, both for the employee and the supervisor," said Mr. Certo, who has taken half a dozen of the intranet classes himself.
He said that he, like others, can tackle a class at lunchtime or on break. "It would be a huge issue for me to find time to go to a classroom for this," he said. "You get to do it when you need it, not when it's offered. It's very nice."
Certegy Teams Up With Pay by Touch
The biometrics vendor Pay by Touch Co. of San Francisco has formed an alliance with Certegy Inc. of St. Petersburg, Fla., to enable consumers to cash government and payroll checks at retail stores.
A fingerprint reader from Pay by Touch will verify their identity; Certegy's systems will verify the checks.
The alliance targets unbanked retail customers. They will enroll at participating stores by showing a driver's license or other identification and submitting to a finger scan. Subsequent transactions will require only the fingerprint and a password.
Mary Waggoner, Certegy's vice president of investor relations, said it hopes to use the alliance to promote its check verification services. "It really broadens the market for our services," she said Tuesday.
Pay By Touch's core offering uses the same scanners and software to link a customer's fingerprint to a credit card or another account to expedite processing at the retail checkout counter.
Wausau to Offer Saflink Security
Saflink Corp. of Bellevue, Wash., announced Wednesday that Wausau Financial Systems Inc. of Mosinee, Wis., will use its biometric security systems internally and offer them to its financial services customers.
The systems are used for password management and related functions. Saflink said Wausau's more than 400 employees will use them to protect sensitive customer information.
Wausau, a developer of payment processing systems for banking and other industries, will also package Saflink systems with its own products for new and current customers. Wausau provides transaction and payment processing systems to more than 5,000 financial services clients.
Dave Lebeau, Wausau's executive vice president of marketing and product development, said in a press release, "Our goal is to ensure that all WFS solutions meet industry and regulatory standards, to provide our customers fast access to our applications in a secure and convenient manner, and to reduce password reset support costs."
Royal of Scotland Forms New Division
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC has formed a payment processing division built around Lynk Systems Inc., an Atlanta merchant acquirer it bought in September.
Royal Bank said Wednesday that the merchant acquirer has been renamed RBS Lynk Inc. and that the new division, Retail Direct USA, will focus solely on the payment processing industry.
The division has been structured as part of Royal Bank's U.S. retail banking arm, Citizens Financial Group Inc. of Providence, R.I.
RBS Lynk is the ninth-largest merchant acquirer in the United States and the third-largest processor of automated teller machines, Royal Bank said.
