By Roy W. Urrico
With improved information flow comes the desire to improve business speed. Chicago-based Bank One ($265 billion) decided to give commercial accounts what they wanted — Direct Delivery Business E-Mail, an automated service that sends customers encrypted business account information electronically. “We started to hear a lot of our customers asking for their statements to be e-mailed to them,” says Leonard Goodman, first vp for channel management at Bank One. “Customers can receive transaction records through a secure, encrypted e-mail message instead of waiting for mailed statements. This will enable our customers to reconcile their accounts and close their books immediately after their statement accounting period ends.”
The outsourced service, developed by Xpedite (Eatontown, NJ), began in pilot mode in May and initially will distribute electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions. Later this year, Bank One expects to expand the service to include other transactional reports such as:
Attacking The Security Issue
Bank One was already familiar with Xpedite, which distributed the institution’s
business statements via fax. “We have been working with them for awhile
on the fax side. It seemed like a natural extension into the e-mail,” explains
Leonard. However with e-mail came added concern about security. “When
we used to do these things by fax it went directly to the recipient,” points
out Marion Bartholomew, director of strategic analysis at Xpedite. “Over
the Internet it is different…banks are concerned with security, they don’t
want files compromised.”
Bank One wanted to beef up security but did not want to deal with distinctive
tokens, smart cards, or software distribution, which would be required
for PKI (public key infrastructure) technology.
The system Xpedite developed permits Bank One clients to receive and
decrypt the bank’s communications on their PCs by using a unique pass phrase,
which changes daily to provide added security. “The real key to this is
the encryption process,” states Leonard.
How It Works
Bank One batches statements and advices and ships them off to Xpedite.
They are then encrypted using DES (Data Encryption Standard). Each e-mail
is automatically sent to the recipient, who must enter the correct pass-phrase
to decrypt and read the file.
To augment the security, the pass-phrase is comprised of a variable
or a combination of variables in the text of the message that can change
daily. The pass phrase is predetermined by Xpedite and the bank’s customer
when they initially sign up for the service. Therefore, the customer just
receives the encrypted e-mail and types in the pass phrase to decrypt the
document.
The service allows Bank One and its customers to use almost any computing
format, including PDF, DOC, JPEG or TIFF. Bank One can obtain the status
of e-mailed files at Xpedite’s e-mail Web site MessageREACH (www.messagereach.com).
There the FI’s staff can view an audit trail of all distributed and undeliverable
e-mails by entering the job number.
Bank One Corporation is the nation‘s fourth largest bank holding company.
The institution operates more than 1,800 banking centers and a network
of ATMs. According to Bank One, it is the world’s largest Visa issuer,
the third largest bank lender to small businesses, one of the top 25 managers
of mutual funds, and a major national automotive lender.
About Xpedite
Xpedite (www.xpedite.com), a subsidiary of PTEK Holdings, Inc. offers a range of electronic- and fax-based document distribution and data messaging services using a dedicated IP network. The encrypted e-mail distribution system developed for Bank One does not have a formal name at this time but Xpedite expects to extend the product to other banks. It will be offered as an outsourced solution or one that can be integrated directly into a bank’s e-mail system. There are no upfront costs; price is based on traffic.
Contact:
Marion Bartholomew
Director of Strategic Analysis
Xpedite
One Industrial Way West
Eatontown, NJ 07724
800/ 333- 0568, ext. 7387
From Microbanker Banking Technology Strategies, Volume 1, Number 1.
http://www.microbanker.com/Newsletters/Banktech.html