Headlines:
Fiserv and Fullerton Renew Check Pact Unisys Enters Three Marketing Deals $3.2B Commitment for Fidelity National PayPal Launches Australian Web Site U.S. Bank Product for ACH and Checks Centrix Develops Positive Pay System
Fiserv and Fullerton Renew Check Pact
After a two-year hiatus, Fiserv Inc. is processing checks again for Fullerton Community Bank.
Fiserv announced Monday that it had begun handling Fullerton's checks again in October. The California bank has outsourced its core account processing, electronic funds transfer, and other services to Fiserv since 1998. The Brookfield, Wis., technology vendor also started handling Fullerton's check processing that year, but Fullerton switched to Aurum Technologies Inc. in 2002. (Fidelity National Financial Inc. bought Aurum in March.)
Fullerton said it wanted to go back to Fiserv to take advantage of its integrated software.
"We believe our abilities will be much stronger with our technology relationship covering all the bases, including check processing," Rick Kusserow, a Fullerton senior vice president, said in a press release.
Unisys Enters Three Marketing Deals
Unisys Corp. has entered a series of partnerships to promote the sale of check imaging equipment and consulting services.
The Blue Bell, Pa., information technology vendor said Monday it would be a nonexclusive worldwide reseller for the Atlanta technology vendor Alogent Corp., whose check-imaging software, sold under the Sierra Xpedite and Sierra Xchange brands, can be used on Unisys' equipment.
Unisys and Alogent have worked together for several years. Their technology is used by Intelligent Processing Solutions Ltd., a British venture that was established at the end of 2000 by a consortium of banks to process checks using image files.
Alogent and Unisys have also entered marketing partnerships the Mississauga, Ontario, security vendor Certicom Corp. and with VeriSign Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., Unisys said.
Certicom provides encryption technology that puts a unique digital signature on a check when it is converted into an electronic image. VeriSign provides digital certificates to verify a company's identity.
By using the four companies' technologies in combination, anyone who handles a check can authenticate the image to confirm that the data has not been compromised, Unisys said.
Also Monday, Unisys said that the Detroit banking company Comerica Inc. has started using its products and consulting services for check-image processing.
$3.2B Commitment for Fidelity National
Fidelity National Financial Inc. has secured commitments for $3.2 billion of loans from a consortium led by Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wachovia Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, and Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
The commitments, announced Friday, are larger than the amount the Jacksonville, Fla., company's technology subsidiary, Fidelity Information Services Inc., had said previously that it was pursuing. Fidelity National is trying to sell off a quarter of the unit and refinance its operations.
Last month Fidelity Information Services said it was seeking $2.8 billion of loans, nearly all of which was earmarked for the parent company. Fidelity National said it planned to use $1.8 billion of that sum to pay a dividend of $10 a share to its stockholders. The technology unit plans to draw only $2.8 billion from the commitments.
Fidelity National said it would not pay the dividend until it sells the 25% in Fidelity Information Services to the leveraged buyout firms Thomas H. Lee Partners LP of Boston and Texas Pacific Group of Fort Worth. The partial sale, announced last month, is expected to close by early March.
PayPal Launches Australian Web Site
PayPal Inc. has expanded into Australia.
The San Jose person-to-person payment subsidiary of the online auction giant eBay Inc. said last week that it had introduced a localized version of its payment Web site in Australia. This month PayPal also added the Australian dollar to its roster of accepted currencies.
The two actions reflect PayPal's international expansion strategy, which began late in 2003, when it unveiled its U.K. payment site. PayPal also has localized Web sites in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Italy.
It can now handle payments in six currencies, and this is the first time it did not wait until after it started accepting a currency to start a localized site.
"If we're going to launch a localized service, we have to make sure that the users in that country can use that system" in their own currency, said Sara Bettencourt, a PayPal spokeswoman.
Last year PayPal said it was trying to boost its use in foreign countries by expanding into regions where eBay has become popular. The U.K. and German eBay sites are the second and third most active, after the U.S. site.
U.S. Bank Product for ACH and Checks
U.S. Bancorp has started offering a product that lets corporate billers deposit automated clearing house payments and checks electronically.
The U.S. Bank Electronic Cash Letter Deposit product combines ACH payments and check images into a single data stream, which is transmitted to the bank for deposit, U.S. Bancorp said last week.
The product lets commercial and government customers make deposits as late as 8 p.m. central time for same-day processing, U.S. Bancorp said.
U.S. bank will also handle return items.
"Our ability to combine ACH and image check clearing options, according to each customer's business rules, provides a competitive advantage for our customers," Jeffrey Jones, the executive vice president of treasury management services at U.S. Bank, said in a press release.
Centrix Develops Positive Pay System
Centrix Solutions Inc. of Lincoln, Neb., has developed an automated positive pay system that is being used by North Bay Bancorp of Napa, Calif.
The Exact/TMS system works with teller systems and check image archives and can be accessed from a Web browser, Centrix said this month.
When North Bay was choosing which positive pay system to use, "it was imperative the system be automated," Suzette Junier, its chief information officer, said in a press release. "Manual processes are inefficient and create risk."
Ariana-Michele Moore, an analyst at Celent Communications LLC in Boston, said a customizable, browser-based positive pay system is good for small banks. Centrix has "overcome the hurdle of customization," because its new system will work with a bank's existing technology, she said.
"Positive pay continues to be one of the most recognizable forms of preventing check fraud," but banks should have more than one anti-fraud system in place, Ms. Moore said.
