Bank technology

The Montreal company UpClick Ltd. said it has developed a processing system that lets online merchants avoid paying transaction fees for sales of less than $40.

Virgin Group PLC may be planning to introduce an online bank in Canada, according to a Friday report in Toronto's Globe and Mail.

The table lists daily composite stock prices at 4 PM (unless otherwise noted) as measured by market capitalization.

MoneyGram International Inc. said Friday that it had agreed to sell its corporate payment processing unit to the Plymouth, Minn., payment technology provider Solutran Inc.

Internet Payment Exchange Inc. announced Thursday that it is offering a payroll deduction feature for some users of its ePayPoint Cash Receipts Service, a point of sale service for health-care providers that collects all types of patient and nonpatient payments through a single system.

After a flirtation with advertising and a dalliance with public relations, many bankers are turning to technology to cope with trust issues.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it has introduced payment initiation and reporting in the ISO 20022 messaging format.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. is pressing its case for a bank-centric approach to offering remittance services to immigrants.

Whitney Holding Corp. of New Orleans will use Jack Henry & Associates Inc.'s SilverLake core processing system in an automation project at Whitney National Bank.

Tightwad Bank, a $17.1 million-asset operating unit of RSB Financial Inc. in Mission Hills, Kan., has developed an informational Web site using design and hosting services from Goldleaf Financial Solutions Inc.

Kiwibank Ltd., New Zealand's state-owned bank, is using software from Postilion, a division of S1 Corp., for processing electronic funds transfers.

In online payments, Amazon.com Inc. is gunning for Google Inc.

The Dallas security software vendor Entrust Inc., which has agreed to sell itself to the private-equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC, attracted three more suitors during its "go-shop" period, which ended last week.

Cardtronics Inc. has nearly completed the transition to in-house processing for its automated teller machines and is planning to offer the same service to banks that want the company to manage their ATM networks.

GMAC LLC, the troubled lender partly owned by General Motors Corp., is pursuing retail banking customers with a new online bank.

The table lists daily composite stock prices at 4 PM (unless otherwise noted) as measured by market capitalization.

Sometimes what you do know can hurt you.

Factors contributing to the downfall of the financial industry have been discussed ad nauseam and I suspect will continue to be debated well into the future. While I agree that identifying the root cause is necessary to ensure history does not repeat itself, financial institutions must begin the recovery process by getting back to business and back to basics.