Bank technology

Union Bank of California said it had begun offering corporate clients a service to transmit wire transfer information to the bank in bulk files for automated processing.

P&H Solutions Inc. said Tuesday that it had added bill presentment and payment capabilities to its online business-banking service, through a pair of vendor partnerships.

Though the share of phishing e-mails attacking banking companies’ brand names has fallen, banks’ losses to fraud are climbing — and the overall volume of fake e-mails has surged.

Businesses are showing increased interest in using universal payment identification codes, The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC said.

The deal by a pair of private-equity companies to acquire Open Solutions Inc. could be a harbinger of merger and acquisition activity in the sector, according to executives and observers.

Bisys Group Inc. said it has reached an agreement in principle to pay $66.5 million to settle a securities class action filed against the company and some of its former officers and directors.

The Atlanta online brokerage Scottrade Inc. announced that it is using software from Yodlee Inc. to offer account-to-account transfer capabilities.

Vendors promoting home biometric security tools to banks say that consumer confidence in the concept has improved, and that in some cases the cost is becoming more manageable.

The Dutch banking company ABN Amro Holding NV has agreed to use software from SAP AG to manage client data for its global cash management services.

Shares of Deluxe Corp. rallied Thursday after the nation’s largest check printer raised its third-quarter earnings guidance by nearly 40%.

International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp. have signed a joint marketing agreement to offer a variety of products and services to banking companies around the world.

Bank of America Corp.’s announcement in 2002 that it would eliminate its fees for online banking sent a shock wave through the industry and prompted several competitors to drop their own fees.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication has finished testing one system for processing corporate information, and announced a test for another.

The operators of the nation's two wire transfer systems say businesses would send more wires - and pay a premium to do so - if they could attach invoice details to the payments.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is letting customers pay for online purchases through PayPal Inc. of San Jose.

Barclays Capital, one of the world's largest foreign exchange banks, hopes to build business for its online trading portal by offering automated exchange tools to traders and correspondents.

Hoping to simplify the servicing of its $600 billion mortgage portfolio, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to consolidate its multiple servicing systems into one using software from Fidelity National Information Services Inc.