Bank technology

The Federal Reserve banks are likely to accelerate their plans to shutter check processing facilities in response to the increasing drop-off in check use, and commercial banks may follow suit, according to a Fed executive.

The payroll services provider CompuPay Inc. has agreed to buy KeyCorp's online payroll service.

The IBC Bank unit of International Bancshares Corp. is offering customers an expanded form of identity theft protection, the data vendor CSIdentity Corp. announced Monday.

Gateway Financial Holdings Inc. said a decrease in shipping costs helped it recover the costs of shifting to a hosted digital service for mortgage originations in six months.

Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd. has agreed to use Total System Services Inc.'s card-issuing and merchant-acquiring services.

The online jewelry merchant MySolitaire.com has agreed to let customers use electronic checks initiated by the Sacramento, Calif., alternative payments company MyECheck Inc. to make purchases.

Huntington Bancshares Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, has agreed to distribute check scanners from Panini North America Inc. of Dayton to corporate customers that use its remote deposit capture service.

Gardner Bancshares Inc. of Kansas has signed an agreement to outsource the core account processing for its $85 million-asset Gardner National Bank to the Brentwood, Tenn., banking technology provider Goldleaf Financial Solutions Inc.

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Sterling Financial Corp. of Spokane plans to use software from S1 Corp. to capture check images at the front counter of its 178 Sterling Savings Bank branches.

A growing number of banking companies are stepping up efforts to use imaging, sometimes with technology originally developed to handle payments, to offer document management services that do not involve any financial activity.

The Denver transaction processor and banking technology provider First Data Corp. said it is using biometric authentication technology from BioPassword Inc. of Issaquah, Wash., to improve security in its fraud detection service.

Nacha, the electronic payments association, is poised to begin testing the Secure Vault Payments system, which uses the automated clearing house network for online purchases, and Metavante Technologies Inc. has agreed to process transactions for the system.

Banks and merchants are evaluating encryption technology that could ensure that audio recordings of calls made to their call centers do not violate the Payment Card Industry data security standard.

BB&T Corp. plans to introduce online processing of lockbox exceptions next month to expedite the handling of incomplete or problematic payments, such as checks that lack a remittance coupon or have an invalid payee name.

Nationwide Building Society, a large British financial company, plans to overhaul its banking, savings, and mortgage processing systems using software from SAP AG.

Regulators have sued a former Diebold Inc. sales employee, claiming he traded illegally on inside knowledge that the North Canton, Ohio, automated teller machine maker would miss financial targets in 2005.