BankServ

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BankServ, a financial services company headquartered in San Francisco, develops software that banks and other businesses use to move money electronically. Founded in 1996, it now does business in more than 50 countries, primarily supplying banks with the behind-the-scenes programs used for wire transfer payments and sending messages over the international SWIFT network.

Since 2004, BankServ has expanded into the relatively new fields of remote deposit and electronic bill payment, and has added an international division headquartered in London. For four consecutive years since 2003, the company has been named to Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 500 list, a list of the fastest-growing privately held corporations in the United States.

BankServ was founded by a group of investors led by current CEO David Kvederis, a former vice president of Wells Fargo Bank. Kvederis is widely known in the financial industry for helping introduce Direct Deposit during his tenure as chairman of the National Automated Clearing House Association (now NACHA-The Electronic Payments Association) during the 1980s. He was also was hired by the U.S. government in 1993 to assist with the transition from a communist to a capitalist financial system in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania.

Originally incorporated under the name Nova Payments, the company now known as BankServ started with the idea of selling check scanners to grocery stores, allowing them to deposit their checks without going to the bank. But in the late 1990s, BankServ’s wire transfer business became its main revenue source, and the idea of remote deposit was abandoned. However, when Congress passed the Check 21 Act in 2003, the legal requirements surrounding remote deposit became less strict, and the company decided to re-enter the business. Today, it provides remote deposit services to more than 1,000 businesses in the United States.

Altogether, BankServ estimates that it handles money either directly or indirectly for about 1 million people and businesses a day.