Headlines:
CheckFree Buys Portfolio Vendor Wachovia to Test Cross-Border System Misys Offering More S1 Software Russian Bank to Use Gemplus Smart Cards
CheckFree Buys Portfolio Vendor
The online bill payment vendor CheckFree Corp. of Atlanta said it had paid $18 million in cash for substantially all of the assets of Integrated Decision Systems Inc. of New York, which makes software for financial portfolio management.
CheckFree plans to merge IDS into its investment services business, which provides processing services and data to broker/dealers, money managers, and investment consultants.
It said the purchase will reduce earnings for fiscal 2006, which will end next June, by about 3 cents a share, to $1.08 to $1.13, but not affect "underlying earnings," its term for operating results, still projected at $1.50 to $1.54.
CheckFree said the purchase would have minimal effect this quarter; its projection for underlying earnings is unchanged at 37 to 39 cents per share.
IDS expands CheckFree's roster of investment management clients and adds retail brokerage performance reporting tools for serving customers with separately managed accounts.
It "not only grows our base of broker/dealer relationships, it also strengthens our opportunities for growth and reinforces our commitment to the growth of the investment management industry," said Alex Marasco, an executive vice president and the general manager of CheckFree's investment services operation, in a press release.
Wachovia to Test Cross-Border System
Wachovia Corp. of Charlotte plans to begin testing a system in November that will let it start sending low-value payments to foreign countries for its corporate customers.
"We have clients who have international needs," said Ann Givens, a senior vice president at Wachovia and the business line manager for the international segment of its treasury services division. "Our clients have been telling us … if they can't buy these low-cost efficient payment methods from Wachovia, they need to go somewhere else," she said last week.
In June, Wachovia licensed the OmniPay payments hub software from Fundtech Corp. of Jersey City. The software sorts payments and delivers them to banks in foreign countries, which would process them over systems similar to the U.S. automated clearing house.
Wachovia plans to test the software first for payments to Canada. That pilot test, which is to last six to eight weeks, will be followed by others for payments to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and the payment service will become generally available early next year, Ms. Givens said.
The closest alternative Wachovia offers today is "a high-value wire transfer," Ms. Givens said.
The transaction time for the new service will vary from country to country, she said.
George Ravich, the chief marketing officer at Fundtech, said OmniPay has been available for a year. One customer, "who never likes to be mentioned," is using it now, and others are implementing it, he said.
Wachovia's implementation did not require much customization, Mr. Ravich said. The company is using the software "exactly … as we designed it."
Misys Offering More S1 Software
The British core banking software vendor Misys PLC has extended its year-old relationship with the U.S. banking software provider S1 Corp.
The London company said Tuesday that it is now offering S1's retail banking software to its 1,200 banking customers worldwide. In March of last year Misys said it would market S1's Internet banking software to its wholesale clients; it has sold it to 12 of them.
"Extending our agreement with Misys to include S1 retail solutions is an important next step in this alliance, as evidenced by the success we have enjoyed so far," said James "Chip" Mahan 3d, S1's chairman and chief executive, in a press release.
The original agreement included S1's corporate banking, personal banking, and trade finance applications. When it was announced, both companies said they would consider including other S1 products if there was demand from customers.
S1 says its Enterprise product line for retail banking includes interoperable modules that support all channels, including the Internet, call centers, and branches.
Russian Bank to Use Gemplus Smart Cards
The Russian bank Surgutneftegazbank has agreed to use smart cards manufactured by Gemplus International S.A.
The Luxembourg card provider said Tuesday that the Moscow banking company has already issued the first cards. Surgutneftegazbank is using Gemplus' newest cards, which are compliant with the latest MasterCard International security specifications.
Offline transactions, for which point of sale terminals are not connected to bank systems in real time, are common in Russia. They require strong security to prevent frauds like skimming, the copying of card data onto a counterfeit card at automated teller machines or POS terminals.
"Gemplus can provide the technology to enable the high security standards our customers expect for rapid, secure card payments," said Zaourbek Besolov, the chief of Surgutneftegazbank's plastic cards department, in a Gemplus press release.
Gemplus also said Tuesday that it had started to deliver smart cards in mass volume to JCB Co. Ltd., Japan's largest card issuer. Gemplus will deliver the cards over two years. JCB began deploying them in July.
