NCR Seeks to 'Profoundly Reinvent' Via Digital Insight, Alaric Buys

NCR Corp.'s (NCR) purchase of Menlo, Calif.-based Digital Insight Corporation for $1.65 billion is a bid to deliver an end-to end omnichannel experience to bank customers, according to company executives who commented on the deal.

The deal follows Intuit's sale of the mobile and online banking unit to private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC in August for $1.025 billion.

Separately, NCR also completed a purchase of Alaric Systems in London for $84 million.

"This is a historic day for our company," said Bill Nuti, chairman and chief executive of Duluth, Ga.-based NCR on an investors' call held late Monday night. "Today we are fundamentally and permanently changing [our] largest line of business: financial services."

The acquisitions of the two software companies, according to NCR, will let the ATM maker offer a fully integrated omnichannel portfolio of products for financial services customers that includes ATM hardware and software, branch hardware and software, digital banking, ATM & card transaction software, fraud detection software, check and imaging solutions, electronic bill payment and presentment and payment processing.

The deal, which is expected to close in first quarter of 2014, also gives NCR a new source of customers. Over two-thirds of Digital Insight's 1,000 U.S. financial institution customers (about 800) are non-NCR customers, said Nuti. All told, Digital Insight counts 12 million online banking users and nearly 4.8 million mobile end users as customers. NCR said the acquisition will let the company offer its clients additional solutions for mobile, bill pay and online banking.

Alaric, meanwhile, provides secure transaction switching and fraud prevention software and powers more than 1.25 billion transactions a month across 30 countries. The Alaric software will help NCR lower its cost per transaction by routing transactions away from legacy switches, and help prevent security breaches.

The purchases give the company a deeper foothold into the software market. Upon closing the deals, NCR said it will have $1.1 billion in annual software revenue, of which $460 million will come as software-as-a-service.

Talent acquisition is always part of NCR's mindset, said Nuti on the call. With these acquisitions, the company is acquiring a talented employee base in Silicon Valley and India, among other locations, he said.

Regarding the quick flip of Digital Insight by Thoma Bravo, the NCR execs said the private equity firm already made some improvements to the company: Thoma Bravo did a "good job" in reducing cost structure and removing overhead, said Nuti. "It's a completely different asset when bolted on to NCR [rather than a private equity firm]," said Nuti.