Many of these additions to the Enterprise portfolio of private-label cash management solutions for financial institutions are made possible by Mellon Financial Corporation's recent acquisition of ClearTran, one of the country's leading providers of flexible, comprehensive electronic and online bill payment solutions that are implemented quickly and without costly or time- consuming development work.

"In today's consumer payment processing environment, there is increased pressure to achieve greater efficiencies in corporate accounts receivable operations and to offer clients convenient, reliable and secure payment alternatives. Since consumers continue to prefer the convenience of paying their bills from anywhere at any time, our acquisition of ClearTran not only complements Mellon's long-standing presence in the electronic and paper-based consumer receivables marketplace, but it also provides our Enterprise bank customers clients with the opportunity to offer their business customers several alternatives," said Greg Cicero, senior vice president and head of Mellon Working Capital Solutions. These options include the Internet, automated voice systems, call centers, kiosks and recurring debit programs, all of which can easily be integrated into a customers' current receivables workflow, including retail lockbox processing. In addition, ClearTran's solutions also can be deployed by banks for their own consumer payments, such as mortgage, credit card, home equity, auto finance and installment loans.

"Our new relationship with ClearTran, along with the recent introduction of our Web-based exception management solution, will support Enterprise in expanding its efforts to help bank clients identify and implement solutions for their business customers that will accelerate their cash flow, while promoting quality, customer service and reliable process control," Cicero added. "These advances are significant milestones in our ongoing efforts to assist our bank clients who want to offer their own business customers a variety of electronic alternatives to move their money and pursue processing efficiencies."

In addition to the capabilities made possible by the ClearTran acquisition, Enterprise also has introduced a new automated Web-based exception processing solution. Developed in conjunction with Wausau Financial Systems, a recognized leader in the development and implementation of financial transaction processing software and hardware solutions, the service is designed to enable private-label bank customers to offer their retail lockbox customers the ability to interactively review and correct exceptions on an intra-day basis so that the transactions can be included in their daily deposit and accounts receivable transmission. Previously, those customers had to wait for the exceptions to be returned and processed through a cumbersome manual process.

Available via EnternetBank, Enterprise's Web-based information reporting and transaction initiation service, the Web Exception service enables its bank clients' business customers to review and decide three key exception types online - accept/reject, account completion and out-of-balance transactions. The service, available throughout Mellon Enterprise's nationwide retail lockbox processing system (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh), also supports efforts to reduce operational risk, process more exceptions in less time and collect funds faster.