Toronto-Dominon Bank Selects HP

HP (Canada) will take over responsibility for Toronto-Dominons automated teller machine network.Industry players and analysts said ATM operations, in particular, are ripe for back-end consolidation and aggregation, as banks try to manage cash, maintain an aging fleet of ATMs, and comply with new financial regulations in the face of increasing competition from white-label ATM operators.br> The TD deal is also being seen as an example of the way Canadas banks will continue to invest in capital equipment while avoiding technology choices that create additional costs for a future merger or other business combination, such as the acquisition of a full-service insurance company. TD will pay $420-million over seven years to Mississauga-based HP Canada. HP, in turn, will lead the project to replace 2,400 TD ATM machines and supply TD with point-of-sale terminals. HP will also manage the network of machines. HP leads a consortium of firms including Diebold of Canada, Transaction System Architects unit ACI Worldwide, Phoenix Interactive Design, and INTRIA Items on the project. The technology platform HP will use to build and maintain TDs network uses standardized hardware and software specifications. That could be important if the federal government allows bank mergers to proceed. One of the significant costs of any kind of combination of the banks will be the merging of different kinds of hardware and software technology. Banks that are using standards-based technologies will find that job cheaper and easier, bank executives and technology company representatives say.