Headlines:
Solidus Ends Patent Fight by Buying BioPay Fidelity Encrypting Mortgage Data on Tapes Commerce of K.C. Using Corillian Software
Solidus Ends Patent Fight by Buying BioPay
The biometric payment company Solidus Networks Inc. is ending its yearlong patent battle with BioPay LLC by buying the company.
Solidus, of San Francisco, said Tuesday that it would pay $82 million in stock for the Herndon, Va., company and expects to complete the transaction in a few weeks.
Both companies sell fingerprint scanners that can be used to authorize payments at the point of sale.
Solidus, which operates under the Pay By Touch brand, has been on a buying spree. In October it announced that it would buy CardSystems Solutions Inc., a merchant payment processing provider; on Dec. 1 it bought Capture Resource Inc. of Bristol, Pa., which has loyalty software and services. Solidus has also been developing a loyalty system with Green Hills Farm Store Inc. of Syracuse, N.Y.
Though Solidus had hinted that it wanted to buy a biometric company, it was hardly on friendly terms with BioPay.
On Jan. 18, Solidus won a patent describing a check-cashing system that uses biometrics. That same day BioPay asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware to invalidate the patent or rule that BioPay does not infringe on it.
That suit was not scheduled to be heard until January 2007; meanwhile, Solidus sued BioPay on Feb. 15 for patent infringement.
Solidus holds 25 patents; BioPay was awarded its first last month.
Fidelity Encrypting Mortgage Data on Tapes
Fidelity Information Services Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., has begun to encrypt mortgage data that it sends to its customers and other business partners on computer tape.
Joseph Nackashi, the chief technology officer of Fidelity's mortgage division, said the decision came after a spate of lost-tapes cases involving companies including Time Warner Inc. and Iron Mountain Inc. exposed individuals' confidential financial data to possible misuse.
Mr. Nackashi said Fidelity, which services nearly 50% of the mortgages in the U.S. market on a shared platform, will use SecureZIP encryption software from the Milwaukee vendor Pkware Inc. for data that it puts on tape.
"Because of the size of some of those transmissions, they still warrant tape media," he said, noting that the company's 80 mortgage-servicing clients include Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., and Washington Mutual Inc. The company also exchanges data with 200 business partners, including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Department of Veterans Affairs, title attorneys, and credit bureaus.
Fidelity, which is majority owned by Fidelity National Financial Inc. of Jacksonville, has pilot tested SecureZIP for four months with two large business partners; this month it began to add more. Mr. Nackashi said the conversion should be complete by mid-2006.
Fidelity has used Pkware for several years for data compression. It analyzed other products but chose SecureZIP because the product family works with a wide range of computing platforms, from Windows desktops to midrange and mainframe systems and Unix and Linux servers.
Customers can decrypt the tapes using digital keys to unlock the files, without paying a charge for software licensing. Mr. Nackashi said Fidelity is working with a partner, which he would not identify, to manage those keys.
Commerce of K.C. Using Corillian Software
Commerce Bancshares Inc. of Kansas City, Mo., is now using software from Corillian Corp. of Portland, Ore., for its online small-business banking service.
Corillian announced the move Wednesday but did not say when it took place.
The software provides customers of the $13 billion-asset banking company with access to personal and business accounts through a single interface. It enables them to schedule immediate, recurring, and future transfers between business and personal accounts and to control online access to account information for multiple users.
"Since the launch of the new system we have seen a tremendous ... jump in online enrollments and positive feedback from our small-business customers," said Cynthia Tetrault, Commerce's vice president of online banking, in Corillian's press release.
