Headlines:
Online Banking in Spanish
Commerce Bancorp Inc. of Cherry Hill, N.J., has developed a Spanish-language version of its online banking site.
Tim Graham, the vice president and manager of Internet banking at Commerce, said its entire online banking site has been translated into Spanish, except for things such as the proper names of some billers.
Commerce has offered the Spanish-language site since mid-March but did not publicize it until last week, Mr. Graham said. It has had very few users, because customers did not know it was available, but he expects use to grow among customers who already use Commerce's Spanish-language automated teller machines and deal with Spanish-speaking staff members.
"We're filling out a service model across the channels," Mr. Graham said.
Commerce uses online banking software from Corillian Corp., which has supported multilingual transactions since November. Commerce has been using the Hillsboro, Ore., vendor's software for two years.
Allegra Sandelli, a Commerce vice president of marketing, said last week that its branches and call centers employ people fluent in the languages common in the regions where it has branches, including Spanish, Cantonese, Russian, and Korean. However, for online banking, "Spanish was definitely, with the growing Latino market, the first and most critical" language for Commerce to support, she said. 
CheckFree Touts U.K. Purchase
CheckFree Corp. of Atlanta says its $56 million purchase of the Wokingham, England, software vendor Accurate Software will let it offer banks worldwide new ways to manage operational risk.
Accurate's products provide account reconciliation, exception management, workflow, and business intelligence analysis to banks, securities firms, and other companies. The purchase closed April 30 and was announced last week.
"The addition of Accurate to CheckFree will accelerate speed-to-market of advanced operational risk management solutions, and deliver greater long-term value to our customers," Randy McCoy, an executive vice president at CheckFree and the general manager of its software division, said in a press release.
CheckFree said the purchase will reduce earnings by about 2 cents a share for its fiscal fourth quarter, which will end June 30, and its full fiscal year but will increase revenue by about $3 million. It now expects post earnings of 13 to 15 cents a share for its fiscal fourth quarter and 51 to 53 cents for the full year.
Next year the purchase will be neutral or have a modestly positive effect on earnings, CheckFree said.
