Headlines:
NexTec Module Uses 'EDI Lite' Mitek Losses Down Despite Sales Drop Veteran IBM Exec to Run Pay By Touch
NexTec Module Uses 'EDI Lite'
The business management software vendor NexTec Group Inc. of Houston is offering an accounting module that incorporates a new business-to-business electronic payment format.
The company is expected to announce today that its new software, aimed at midsize companies, is using the Electronic Payments Network Straight Through Processing 820 remittance standard
EPN STP 820 was introduced by c Co. LLC in November. Based on the Electronic Data Interchange file that many large companies use, the 820 format has fewer data fields and was designed to encourage smaller companies to send and receive payments electronically.
With EDI, "the problem is when it started, it started for those large corporations," said Rosanna Salaris, the senior vice president of the Clearing House's Electronic Payments Network unit. "They created this convoluted standard that had everything you can imagine."
This was fine for the large corporations, but "if you're a midsize company or a small business, that standard is too complicated for you, and you don't need it," she said.
Ms. Salaris described the 820 format as "EDI lite." It is designed for companies that cannot afford the dedicated systems required to handle standard EDI files.
Andrew M. Nunez, the general manager of NexTec's New York office, said in a press release that "the EPN STP 820 gives every business user who pays invoices exactly what they want - a fast, easy way to generate automated electronic payments from within the accounting application itself."
Several developers of cash management software, including Fiserv Inc.'s Banklink unit, P&H Solutions Inc., S1 Corp., and Fundtech Ltd., have already integrated EPN STP 820 into their products.
The NexTec software module plugs into accounting software offered by Microsoft Corp. and Sage Group PLC.
Madhavi Mantha, a senior analyst at Celent Communications LLC in Boston, said that the older EDI standard has "really been very much limited to the large banks providing these capabilities and to the large customers who can take advantage of those services." The streamlined EPN STP standard is a "common denominator that all types of institutions can leverage."
Mitek Losses Down Despite Sales Drop
The check-imaging software vendor Mitek Systems Inc. of Poway, Calif., said its losses narrowed in the March quarter, though sales also dropped.
On Monday the company announced a net loss for the quarter, the second of its fiscal year, of $799,000, 2.1% less than a year earlier and 12.9% less than in the December quarter. Net sales were $1.8 million, down 10% from a year earlier.
Last July the company sold its CheckQuest check-processing product line to the Decatur, Ga., check printer and technology vendor John H. Harland Co. Omitting revenue from that unit, Mitek's net sales for the second quarter of 2004 were $1.5 million.
Mitek said the current quarter's results would include a $1 million payment that it received in April from Harland, the last it would receive for that sale.
Veteran IBM Exec to Run Pay By Touch
Pay By Touch Networks Inc. of San Francisco announced Tuesday that it had hired John Morris as its president and chief operating officer.
Mr. Morris is a 23-year veteran of International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y. He was most recently the leader of its distribution sector, Americas; earlier he led worldwide sales and marketing for the IBM zSeries mainframe product line.
Pay By Touch sells devices to merchants that enable customers to authorize payments by using a fingerprint reader. Users enroll in a program that links their fingerprints with their bank or credit card accounts.
