Headlines:
Pulse, First Horizon Unit in Debit Deal Bisys to File Delayed, Restated Results Andera, Digital Envoy in Reselling Deal Hypercom Appoints Two Directors
Pulse, First Horizon Unit in Debit Deal
Pulse EFT Association LP has agreed to be the exclusive PIN debit network for U.S. point of sale transactions for First Horizon National Corp.'s First Tennessee Bank.
The seven-year agreement was announced Wednesday. Pulse, which Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services acquired last year, will also be First Tennessee's primary automated teller machine network in the United States. Visa U.S.A. Inc.'s Plus ATM network will be the Memphis bank's network of last resort.
The bank has about 500,000 PIN debit cards. All PIN debit transactions made on those cards in the United States will be switched and settled on Pulse.
Leah Henderson, the executive vice president of sales for Pulse, said its acceptance among U.S. retailers is "virtually 100%," but she conceded there is a chance a retailer's terminal will not accept Pulse cards for PIN debit transactions. In such a case, the customer would have to use another form of payment, she said.
The First Tennessee deal is not Pulse's first such arrangement with a bank, but it will "drive incremental volume to the Pulse network," Ms. Henderson said. The network serves about 4,200 banks and credit unions.
Mike Marzec, the manager of electronic banking for First Horizon, said First Tennessee is reissuing cards to reflect the arrangement with Pulse. Until this year First Data Corp.'s Star was the bank's primary PIN debit network, and Pulse was its secondary network.
Mr. Marzec was named to Pulse's financial institution oversight committee.
First Tennessee has been a Pulse member since 1997, and Fred Spratlin, the bank's former senior vice president and manager of electronic banking, was the network's chairman from May 2001 to February 2004. (Pulse no longer has a board.)
Bisys to File Delayed, Restated Results
Bisys Group Inc. said that it plans to file a delayed annual report for its last fiscal year, which ended June 30, within a few weeks, and that the filing would include restated results going back to 2003.
The New York financial outsourcing provider, which announced its plans Tuesday, has not filed any financial reports since February of last year, when it issued its second-quarter earnings for fiscal 2004.
Since then Bisys has been working to resolve accounting issues involving fees which were paid by U.S. mutual funds and used to pay fund advisers and support marketing and distribution expenses.
Bisys said in July that it would restate its last three years of earnings to resolve the fee-accounting issue.
Also Tuesday, Bisys said the New York Stock Exchange would continue to list its stock for at least the next six months while it works on filing the overdue reports.
Last month Bisys sold its information services unit, which provides, among other things, outsourced core processing for 220 banks, to Open Solutions Inc. for $470 million.
Andera, Digital Envoy in Reselling Deal
The Providence, R.I., banking technology vendor Andera Inc. has agreed to resell security software from Digital Envoy Inc.
Andera said Monday that it would offer Digital Envoy's Fraud Analyst as part of its New Accounts Online account-opening application.
Fraud Analyst verifies users' identity by examining the Internet protocol addresses of their computers. For example, it can determine an applicant's location and see if it matches the one on a bank account application. Digital Envoy's software "will give our clients increased confidence in the security of offering new account opening online," Charlie Kroll, Andera's president, said in a press release.
Andera and Digital Envoy, of Norcross, Ga., also plan to work together to incorporate multifactor authentication into Andera's service.
Hypercom Appoints Two Directors
The Phoenix point of sale terminal manufacturer Hypercom Corp. named Todd S. Nelson and Philippe Tartavull to its board.
The appointments, announced Tuesday, expanded the board's membership to six people, five of whom are from outside the company. Mr. Nelson, 47, is the former chairman, chief executive, and president of Apollo Group Inc., an educational company with several subsidiary schools.
Mr. Tartavull, 48, is the president of North and Central American operations for the smart card technology vendor Oberthur Card Systems.
