Headlines:
Carreker Postpones Earnings Report PassMark Gets a Customer in Britain Pacific National Installs Experian Product N.Y.'s Empire to Use Software from VSoft
Carreker Postpones Earnings Report
The Dallas check-processing and imaging software vendor Carreker Corp. said an accounting issue has forced it to delay its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report, which was scheduled for Wednesday.
The error, which was related to deferred revenue, is expected to lower Carreker's revenue by less than $2.1 million. The company did not say when it would file its report.
"We are still in the preliminary stages of our review but have determined that the issue is not related to the company's ongoing accounting practices, that it does not affect the company's cash position, and that it will not impact future results," John D. "Denny" Carreker, the company's chairman and chief executive, said in a press release Tuesday.
In the third quarter, Carreker lost $950,000, or 4 cents a chare, compared with a profit of $513,000, or 2 cents a share, for the same quarter a year earlier. Third-quarter revenue dropped 7%, to $28.4 million.
PassMark Gets a Customer in Britain
The Menlo Park, Calif., software vendor PassMark Security Inc. has its first customer outside the United States.
The vendor said Wednesday that the British banking company Alliance & Leicester PLC began rolling out the PassMark authentication software this week after conducting a monthlong test.
Lin Johnstone, PassMark's chief executive, said in an interview Wednesday that Alliance & Leicester is introducing the software in phases; it is being offered now to a million of the company's 5 million retail and business online banking customers and will be made available to the rest later. She would not say when.
Ms. Johnstone expects other European banking companies to follow suit. She said PassMark is currently talking to companies in the United Kingdom and Germany.
"Alliance & Leicester is a catalyst," she said. "Phishing and keylogging are becoming a worldwide phenomenon."
PassMark's software displays a user-selected image to verify that a bank's site is real, and it puts a file on the user's computer to confirm the user's identity. Users who want to access the site from a machine that does not have the file can answer questions to authenticate themselves.
The software can also monitor transactions to spot suspicious activity and stop high-risk transactions.
Guidelines issued in October by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council suggested that financial companies strengthen their online security for their riskiest remote transactions.
Pacific National Installs Experian Product
Pacific National Bank, a Miami subsidiary of Banco del Pacifico SA of Guayaquil, Ecuador, has agreed to use anti-laundering software from the Costa Mesa, Calif., credit bureau Experian Inc.
Experian said Tuesday that Pacific National selected its Assist//CK software to help it comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and the USA Patriot Act. The software helps banks analyze the movement of money and spot unusual behavior.
"As suspicious activities, including money laundering, fraud, terrorist funding, and tax evasion, continue to take place, and criminals develop more creative and difficult-to-detect methods for funneling illegal funds through banks, compliance officers' responsibilities become more difficult," Marc Kirshbaum, the president of Experian's fraud solutions unit, said in a press release.
N.Y.'s Empire to Use Software from VSoft
Empire Corporate Federal Credit Union in Albany, N.Y., is planning to install check imaging software from VSoft Corp. of Atlanta.
VSoft said Wednesday that Empire, which offers investment, credit, payment, and correspondent services to more than 1,000 credit unions, would offer them its Branch Item Capture software.
The software lets companies convert paper checks into digital images for electronic settlement.
Empire will also use VSoft's Image Exchange and Image Archive software to process the check images it will receive from the credit unions.
"It is apparent that VSoft has a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies involved in the wholesale credit union market," Nancy Virkler, Empire's senior vice president of operations, said in a VSoft press release.
