Headlines:
An Ind. Bank Gets Scheduling Help Billserv Resurfaces in Processing Sector AOL Offering Users Two-Stage Security
An Ind. Bank Gets Scheduling Help
Old National Bancorp of Evansville, Ind., will begin using software from Demos Solutions of Norwell, Mass., this year to schedule the staffing of tellers in its 110 branches.
The $9 billion-asset company is currently installing StaffSmart Enterprise, said Dick Pittlekow, Old National's northern division president, who is based in Terre Haute and is overseeing the project.
The plan is to match staffing levels with branch traffic patterns, so each branch has enough tellers to meet demand during peak periods but only as many as needed during slow periods, Mr. Pittlekow said. Old National's goal is to serve 95% of its clients within five minutes after they enter the teller line.
"As part of the implementation we did a lot of benchmarking," Mr. Pittlekow said. A branch in a college town, for instance, would expect a surge of activity as school starts in the fall, while others might have different traffic patterns, depending on nearby businesses.
"Each individual banking center has its own set of metrics," he said.
Old National reviewed three vendors and chose Demos largely because it provided implementation and training, Mr. Pittlekow said; the other contenders would have handed off the installation to a third party. "We were not comfortable with that. We wanted to hold one company responsible for the implementation."
Billserv Resurfaces in Processing Sector
The company once known as Billserv Inc., whose online billing venture collapsed after the dot-com bust, has reinvented itself as a payment processor.
The San Antonio company, now called Payment Data Systems Inc., issued a "shareholder update" Wednesday saying that it had repositioned itself as a processor of electronic payments. It is focusing on automated clearing house transactions, including accounts receivable conversion at the biller's lockbox, point of presentment conversion, returned checks, online bill payment with debit cards, and merchant credit card services.
Payment Data is not yet profitable, but "we're narrowing that," said Michael R. Long, its chairman and chief executive.
Billserv had developed technology that used the ACH network to transmit billing information, but it ran out of money before it could take the system beyond the testing phase. In May 2003 it sold most of its technology assets to an Atlanta processor now known as Harbor Payments Inc. for $4.8 million.
Mr. Long said his company used the proceeds to pay down debt, fortify its balance sheet, and reorganize as a payment processor with "a much different profile, a much lower expense base."
The company, which took the Payment Data name in August 2003, retained hard assets such as computers, office equipment, and the retail e-payment portal bills.com, which executes consumer payments over the network operated by CheckFree Corp. of Atlanta.
The publicly traded Payment Data said its loss narrowed by 67% in the second quarter, to $302,949, or 1 cent a share, as revenue more than doubled, to $64,202.
Mr. Long said that he foresees growth for Payment Data as an ACH processor and that a number of firms, particularly those who deal with returned checks, "are contracting with us."
AOL Offering Users Two-Stage Security
America Online Inc., a unit of Time Warner Inc., is offering customers a new security hardware device that could give two-factor authentication a boost.
The PassCode device, a key chain-size gadget from the Bedford, Mass., security vendor RSA Security Inc., generates a supplemental password that would be required for users to log in.
"AOL PassCode is like adding a deadbolt to your AOL account," Ned Brody, the Dulles, Va., company's senior vice president for premium services, said in a press release Tuesday.
The device costs $9.95, plus $1.95 to $4.95 a month, depending on the number of screen names the customer wants to protect. It generates and displays a six-digit code that changes every 60 seconds.
Subscribers to the optional service must enter that code, in addition to their user name and password, to log in. The second password is validated using RSA's patented technology.
Bankers have long been concerned that traditional user-name and password authentication does not offer enough protection, because the data is easily compromised. Though more effective, systems like two-stage authentication or digital encryption certificates have been used in the past only to protect high-dollar-value transactions, such as wire transfers.
Avivah Litan, a vice president at the Stamford, Conn., research firm Gartner Inc., said that adoption of the technology by a company as high-profile as AOL, the nation's largest Internet service provider, could raise the security issue in the minds of consumers.
"Maybe the banks will be more likely to do something," Ms. Litan said. "They're the ones who need to do something, but they don't have 23 million subscribers."
