Headlines:
Security Standards Program
Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., U.S. Bancorp, and Bank of New York Co. are developing a uniform set of security standards for their technology providers.
The six banking companies plus several accounting firms and the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington financial services trade group, announced the Financial Institution Shared Assessments Program on Wednesday.
Five service providers - First Data Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Yodlee Inc., Acxiom Corp., and Viewpointe Archive Services LLC - tested some of the standards last year.
Providers can simply adhere to them or become members of the program, said Susanna Space, a spokeswoman for BITS, the trade group's technology arm. Membership will give them a say in future changes.
Accounting firms including Deloitte & Touche, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Ernst & Young participated in the pilot test and have agreed to be technical advisers, she said.
PayPal Reducing Fund's Return
PayPal Inc. will lower the yield on its variable-rate money market fund March 1.
Amanda Pires, a spokeswoman for the payment subsidiary of eBay Inc. of San Jose, said Wednesday that it would cut the yield by 25 basis points to offset the costs of managing the fund. "As it's grown, the cost of managing it has grown."
PayPal, which currently pays a seven-day average yield of 4.38%, told customers about the drop Monday in an e-mail. It has offered the fund since November 1999. The fund does not carry a management fee. Lowering the yield, which is known for being well above the industry average, would bring it closer to that of PayPal's competitors.
