Identrus buys Digital Signature Trust

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Wed Mar 27 19:02:51 EST 2002


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Status:  U
To: rahettinga at earthlink.net
Subject: Identrus buys Digital Signature Trust
From: t.c.jones at att.net
Reply-to: epay at ca0.net
Date: 27 Mar 2002 13:48:12 -0800

Identrus buys Digital Signature Trust

By LUCAS MEARIAN
(March 25, 2002)
Identrus LLC today announced that it has signed a deal
to acquire Digital Signature Trust Co. (DST) from Salt
Lake City-based Zions Bancorporation and the Washington-
based American Bankers Association for an undisclosed
amount. The deal gives Identrus the service arm it has
sorely needed as it struggles to be the user
authentication service for business-to-business e-
commerce.

"There is a need for a B2B payment network. The banks
were missing the boat, and now they'll be able to jump
on and have a solid have base to operate from," said
Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford,
Conn.

New York-based Identrus, a vendor formed by a consortium
of banks, has been building a global public-key
infrastructure (PKI)-based system that was trying to be
the de facto "digital handshake" for cross-border
business-to-business transactions. Although Identrus had
the framework, guidelines and preferred vendors, it
didn't have its own service.

"Many banks ran into problems with vendors, and it took
months to get [the PKI service] implemented. And then
the customer didn't want to use it," Litan said.

Last year, Identrus assumed ownership of Project Eleanor
(see story), a joint venture of several financial
institutions aimed at creating a standard for secure
business-to-business payments over the Internet and
bolstering straight-through processing or single-day
settlement of trades.

Salt Lake City-based DST provides online digital
identity services to federal and state government
agencies, including the Social Security Administration,
and to U.S.-based financial services and utilities
markets through its TrustID program.

Greg Worch, chief marketing officer at Identrus, said
the two companies are complementary from a geographical
standpoint, a market segment standpoint and from a
capabilities standpoint.

Identrus has been dominant on global basis, but although
the U.S. it has some "major players," the PKI market was
fragmented compared with the rest of the world, he said.

"TrustID is more targeted to needs of the middle market
and B2B space," Worch said. "DST also operates not just
with banks but has more strength with the nonbank
industry -- the mortgage industry, government sector and
supply chain area."


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA

The IBUC Symposium on Geodesic Capital
April 3-4, 2002, The Downtown Harvard Club, Boston
<mailto: rah at ibuc.com> for details...

"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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