<p>ATLANTA – Have credit unions become such an attractive market or are Net banking firms running out of places to find new business? S1 Corporation, which has traditionally focused on the community bank and commercial bank market, is the latest Net banking firm to get more serious about winning credit union business. S1 and Corillian have been battling it out in the commercial bank business for years. Corillian has stepped up its credit union marketing efforts as reported in Credit Union Times in recent months. Now S1, with the recent signing of the $2.2 billion Jax Navy CU, Jacksonville, Fla. is seeing credit unions as a potential growth segment. Pat Jerge, general manager of the S1 Community and Regional eFinance Solutions Group, said S1 is at a disadvantage right now because it doesn't have all of the interfaces for the large credit union processors. However S1 does have some, including Summit, XP Systems, Aurum, and is in the process of developing one for Symitar. S1 now has a dedicated employee working on developing relationships with credit union data processors, and to let them know that S1 is a player in the credit union space. Jerge stressed that while S1 views Corillian and Digital Insight as its main Net banking competitors, it considers itself as a multi-channel integration company. Jerge said case in point is what Jax Navy will be doing with S1. Jax has signed on for S1′s Enterprise product, which includes Internet banking, a business banking solution, a call center application, a marketing content solution and a teller and platform product that is designed to aid in cross-selling done by tellers and MSRs. "The Enterprise platform delivers that common experience. The reason we think credit unions are attractive is because they are pretty technically savvy and generally get their membership to accept nonstandard delivery of service, the Net, call centers, the telephone," said Jerge. He also believes S1′s pricing is a better model for credit unions than Digital Insight's. "Some of the competition is vulnerable. The model of Digital Insight is they charge high user fees. When the land grab for Internet banking was going on, their model was (charging) very little up front, and $3-$4 users fees. A lot of those contracts are coming up for renewal," said Jerge, who noted that S1 is actively calling on those DI customers. He said S1 charges some up-front and installation fees, and beyond that a fixed subscription fee for a three-year period, or user fees priced below the main competitors. Jerge said Net banking vendors can't get away with what they did in the past on the pricing end. "It's certainly more price conservative than even a year ago. In the initial mania to get to the Internet they were paying some pretty exorbitant pricing," said Jerge. He said at S1 the pricing was astronomical in the early days. He noted one client that was paying S1 $100 million to develop Net banking for them. Those days are long gone according to Jerge. With some recent acquisitions, S1′s client base is just over 3,000 according to the company. It has made some key Net banking company acquisitions in recent years, including QUP and Edify. [email protected]</p>