Bank technology

It has been three years since the banking industry had a clear picture of its payments systems; meanwhile, paper checks have ceded their position as the leading payment method to electronic ones.

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A proposed standard for downloading bank account data could eliminate the language barrier between two competing types of Internet banking tools: aggregation, which has generated ire for its dependence on screen-scraping, and personal finance software.

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

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Analysts seem to agree that online “phishing” scams are a big problem, but they say it is evolving so rapidly that they cannot be sure just how big.

Wells Fargo & Co., which has announced two international remittance partnerships in a month, is planning to expand its business even farther.

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PayPal Inc., whose main business is providing the back-end payment engine for eBay Inc., has added a deal with Paymentech LP to an expansion plan that emphasizes small businesses.

Fiserv Inc. has landed two new banks as core-processing clients, winning praise from stock watchers.

When Leonard J. Heckwolf became Nacha's chairman in January 2003, accounts receivable conversion was one of the least-used types of automated clearing house payments, online bill payment was a novelty for consumers, and bankers weren't sure whether Check 21 would become law.

The Federal Reserve banks plan to replace one of their oldest online-access systems with an Internet version over the next 18 months, an official said Monday.

Fiserv Inc. chief executive Leslie M. Muma said that by yearend the outsourcer could reach an agreement to manage a check processing consortium made up of three of Australia's top four banks.

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For much of the past two years Enterprise Bank of Lowell, Mass., has been experimenting with what may be a unique product: software for extending credit lines online to the customers of its small-business clients.

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As U.S. financial services companies look for ways to capture more of the remittance market, companies in countries to which many of those remittances are sent continue to find new ways to make it easier for consumers to accept payments.