Bank technology

Shares of American Bank Note Holographic Inc. plunged this week after Visa U.S.A. said it had stopped distributing credit cards featuring a holographic magnetic stripe the Robbinsville, N.J., vendor developed.

The online banking software vendor Digital Insight Corp. says distribution partnerships like one it has with CashEdge Inc. will be an important way for it to reap more benefit from its strong position with middle-market banks.

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Wachovia Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. are working on a system they say will accomplish something that has been elusive in banking technology: provide every business unit with the same information about customers.

The Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department have launched a Web site that banks and individuals can use to set up direct deposit for government payments, such as Social Security checks.

When First Data Corp. announced plans to spin off its money-transfer business, it was betting that its remaining processing operations would fare better within a company focused solely on transaction processing.

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Now is a good time to be selling point of sale terminals.

The online payment processor CyberSource Corp. is hoping that an acquisition and a marketing and distribution deal, both announced last week, will help it expand its role in the e-commerce market.

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

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Security vendors are warning of a new type of phishing scam with a longer potential lifespan than the typical attack.

To encourage businesses to make large payments to vendors electronically, Bank of America Corp. has introduced an automated payment service that links accounts payable systems to card-like accounts.

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Changing a Web site's login process is inconvenient for customers, but there are ways to minimize the hassle and ways to make it worse.