Bank technology

For the second consecutive quarter the Atlanta banking software company S1 Corp. has lowered its revenue guidance.

The micropayment software vendor Peppercoin Inc. says it is not threatened by a recently announced rate structure from PayPal Inc. that seems to take aim at Peppercoin's most important market segment - online merchants.

First Data Corp.'s third-quarter earnings fell 8% from a year earlier, but gains in the Denver payment processor's merchant services and payment services businesses offset a steep drop in its card-issuing services unit.

Acquisitions made over the last 12 months produced most of the third-quarter revenue growth at Metavante Corp., which has already made a strong start on dealmaking this quarter.

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

In their efforts to satisfy demand from corporate treasury managers for more information about their accounts, banks are also beefing up their security tools.

Headlines:

Harris Bank customers can bypass the tedious phone tree they typically encounter when dialing a call center by clicking a link on Harris’ Web site to request a representative call them directly.

Banks are stepping up their efforts to become corporate financial advisers rather than just places to store money, even if those efforts hurt fee and interest revenue.

Acquiring VeriSign Inc.’s payment gateway business would give PayPal Inc. a significant boost in transaction volume and a new customer base that it covets, as well as making the eBay Inc. subsidiary a more direct competitor to banks.

Headlines:

The San Francisco biometric payments company Solidus Networks Inc. plans to double the number of retail stores using its fingerprint scanners this year — and increase it nearly fiftyfold next year.

Bankers are learning that some of the online services they offer to consumers are also appealing to small businesses — and vice versa.

Nacha, the electronic payments association, has started using a security feature developed by The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC that makes it safer for companies to send automated clearing house payments.