Bank technology

Forget traditional measurements of customers relationships; business intelligence relies on analytics and economic modeling to determine a customer's value over time.

A payment start-up is hoping to entice the unbanked to shop online by dusting off an idea that has been tried several times in the past with varying degrees of success: charging purchases to a phone bill.

The Walldorf, Germany, software vendor SAP AG says an application it is developing to help companies link their automated banking systems with Swift could accelerate the adoption of electronic payments and reduce the cost of linking corporate financial systems with those of their banks.

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The Reston, Va., communication services company TNS Inc. has agreed to manage the automated teller machine network and data network for Co-op Financial Services.

The Malvern, Pa., payment technology vendor USA Technologies Inc. has installed its card readers in 1,000 self-serve photo booths operated by Foto Fantasy Inc. of Hudson, N.H.

Two bank-owned groups are reporting surprisingly strong gains in image clearing as the industry continues to shifts away from paper checks.

Technology Credit Union has started offering a mobile banking service that uses software from MShift Inc. of San Jose.

The Brookfield, Wis., banking technology and outsourcing firm Fiserv Inc. has purchased WorkingRx Inc., a privately held Salt Lake City provider of back-office processing products and services for pharmacies to handle workers' compensation claims.

Yodlee Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., and CashEdge Inc. of New York, two vendors of online aggregation and transfer products, said Thursday that they had settled their three-year patent dispute.

A ruling last week in a dispute involving the merchant processor Paymentech LP is another sign that the courts have narrowed their views on what types of business process advances can be patented and what constitutes infringement, legal experts said.

Paperless banking is a no-lose, self-funded initiative that benefits all parties involved.

SAN FRANCISCO — Despite their preferences, until recently consumers had few options other than credit cards for online payments, industry observers say, but dozens of companies are offering or developing alternatives that are starting to eat into cards' share of online transactions.

The banking outsourcing provider Online Resources Corp. has come out with a version of its online collections service for small and midsize lenders, billers, and receivables management companies.

The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC said Wednesday that it will combine its check and check image clearing operations on Oct. 1.

NEW YORK — Bankers underwriting First Data Corp.'s loans are expected to sell between $9 billion and $10 billion of the deal, a source familiar with the situation said, nearly double what they set out to sell when they began marketing the deal last week.

Six years after terrorist attacks in New York and Washington exposed glaring weaknesses in banks' data security and disaster recovery systems, a pair of research groups have developed a standardized approach that companies can use to benchmark their own readiness.

S1 Corp. has incorporated customer relationship management software from Econiq Inc. of Boston into its sales and call center applications.