A retail grocer who was tired of getting bad checks, came up with the ideal, and originally created what is now know as ChexSystems. He recognized business institutions needed a way to share information to help stop account abuse and fraud.
The ideal quickly caught on and rapidly grew. For nearly 30 years now, ChexSystems has been a central provider of account abuse and fraud information to the U.S. banking industry.
A company called The Deluxe Corporation purchased ChexSystems in 1984. Today, ChexSystems is managed by EFunds Corporation, an independent, publicly traded company.
ChexSystems is merely one of the companies that EFunds owns. Many people may not have heard of them, or ChexSystems, until the moment they are denied from opening a bank account.
EFunds Corporation principal activities are transaction processing, risk management and professional services to financial institutions & retailers, electronic funds transfer networks and government agencies.
The Group operates in four segments: Electronic Payments which provides electronic funds transfer, automated clearinghouse and other payment processing services, ATM Management Services which provides ATM deployment, management and branding services, Decision Support and Risk Management which provides risk management based data and other products, which ChexSystems is a part of. And other Professional Services which provides business process management and IT outsourcing services.
During the year 2002, the Group acquired Hanco Systems Inc (Hanco), Samsar ATM Company Inc (Samsar), Evergreen Teller Services Inc (Evergreen) and Cash Resources Inc (CRI). Electronic payments accounted for 34% of 2002 revenues; Decision support and risk management, 26%; ATM management services, 21% & Professional services, 19%.
They have either bought up or partnered with more companies since.
Efunds... the company that owns ChexSystems, Deluxe Corporation, also owns Current Checks (a.k.a. Checks Unlimited), Designer Checks, SCAN (Shared Check Authorization Network), the Debit Bureau, which tracks your check-writing history, and Deluxe Direct Marketing Services.
Though most of us have never heard of them... if you ever wrote a check, used a ATM machine, used a debit card, sent or received a money wire transfer, etc. etc; you have dealt with this very quiet and powerful company.
More information can be found out about Efunds, the company that owns ChexSystems at www.efunds.com
