Headlines:
Solidus Strikes Again with Two More Deals M&T Makes It 10 Users of SVPCO Net Foreign-ATM Fees Now Average $2.91 BNP Paribas Buys 265 Diebold ATMs
Solidus Strikes Again with Two More Deals
The San Francisco biometric payments company Solidus Networks Inc., which bought two companies and announced a deal for a third early this month, said Thursday that it now owns two more.
The new ones - 7th Street Software Inc. of Berkeley, Calif., and Convena LLC of San Francisco - had roles in developing Solidus' SmartShop loyalty system, which makes special offers to customers on the basis of their buying habits.
Buying two companies brought Solidus more of the intellectual property used in SmartShop and the engineers who developed it, said John Morris, president and chief operating officer.
7th Street, originally a unit of the cell phone manufacturer Nokia Corp., developed software that is used in SmartShop, he said.
Solidus bought Convena from Hawkins Strategic LLC of Skaneateles, N.Y. Gary Hawkins, the seller's chief executive, helped develop SmartShop; he is also the CEO of Green Hills Farm Store Inc. of Syracuse, N.Y., where it is being used.
Solidus' core product is its Pay By Touch biometric fingerprint systems, which authorizes payment at grocery stores and other retailers. Customers can use their fingerprints to access checking or credit accounts instead of using checks, cash, or payment cards at the register. Solidus says its biometric scanners are more accurate than cards at gathering loyalty information because friends and family members often share loyalty cards.
Capture Resource Inc. of Bristol, Pa., which Solidus bought early this month, is also a loyalty technology company. Solidus said that purchase would enable it to offer SmartShop as a card-based program for merchants that want the personalized offers but not the biometric component.
Also this month Solidus bought CardSystems Solutions Inc., a merchant payment processor, and announced that it had agreed to buy a biometric payment rival, BioPay LLC.
M&T Makes It 10 Users of SVPCO Net
The $54.8 billion-asset M&T Bank Corp. of Buffalo has become the 10th company to send check image files across the SVPCO Image Payments Network.
Dennis Krezmien, M&T's vice president of item processing services, said it transmitted its first images Dec. 2, to the Federal Reserve and a bank trading partner that was already using the SVPCO network. He would not identify the receiving bank or say how many images M&T has transmitted.
"What we're sending out is just the beginning of what we're looking to send," he said.
M&T does not plan to accept images for clearing until it sets up its back office to handle day-2 exception items, such as adjustments and returns, he said. "We perceive that to be in the critical path," Mr. Krezmien said. "It will be toward the middle of next year before we are all set."
The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC announced the transmissions Wednesday.
Foreign-ATM Fees Now Average $2.91
Consumers now pay $2.91 on average - an all-time high - to withdraw money from an automated teller machine their bank or thrift does not own, according to Bankrate Inc.
That includes payments to their own institution and the other one, the New York online aggregator of financial data said this month in the latest installment of a twice-a-year study.
Bankrate said U.S. consumers will pay more than $4.3 billion this year - 13.2% more than last year - to make such withdrawals. The average fee imposed by the ATM's owner increased 10% from its March study, to $1.54.
Bankrate surveyed 458 banks and thrifts in the top 25 U.S. markets. Eighty-two percent now charge $1.50 or more to noncustomers; only 71% did so in the spring survey.
BNP Paribas Buys 265 Diebold ATMs
BNP Paribas Group of Paris has purchased 265 automated teller machines from Diebold Inc. of North Canton, Ohio
Diebold said Thursday that BNP plans to install the machines in its branches by the end of the second quarter. The French company has 105,000 employees, including 80,000 in Europe, and a presence in more than 85 countries.
Diebold also announced yet another high-level reorganization Thursday. It is combining its procurement, manufacturing engineering, and manufacturing groups into a unit that George S. Mayes Jr. will lead as vice president of global supply chain management. (Mr. Mayes led manufacturing.)
Diebold has made a lot of news this week. On Monday Thomas W. Swidarski, who had been promoted to a similar umbrella job in September, was named chief executive, succeeding Walden W. O'Dell, who resigned. John N. Lauer, a board member, succeeded Mr. O'Dell as chairman.
And a shareholder lawsuit filed Wednesday claims that executives inflated Diebold's share price - by not fully disclosing problems with its election machines and its restructuring charges - while selling $2.7 million of Diebold stock.
