Park National forms alliance with Elan Financial Services and Elavon

Oct 13, 2008 (Datamonitor via COMTEX) -- PRK | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Park National Corporation, through its subsidiary The Park National Bank, has signed definitive agreements with Elan Financial Services and Elavon, both of which are wholly owned subsidiaries of US Bancorp.

Under the agreements, Elan will purchase The Park National Bank's unsecured credit card portfolio and Elavon will acquire substantially all of its merchant bankcard processing portfolio (also called merchant servicing portfolio). These portfolios include accounts from each of Park's 12 Ohio-based banking divisions.

Park's local banking professionals will continue to sell and support credit card related services, and cards issued by Elan will bear the local Park affiliate bank name.

The credit card portfolio, with a current outstanding balance of approximately $30 million, includes all Park Ohio-based affiliates' regular credit card products, such as Visa Classic, Visa Signature Series, Visa Gold cards, or MasterCard. The sale to Elan does not include home equity based Visa cards. The merchant servicing portfolio includes payment processing services for approximately 1,700 merchants.

Through the agreement with Elan, Park expects to be able to expand its overall credit card customer base by offering a more competitive product line to both existing and new markets.

The transition of the accounts is expected to be completed in the first half of 2009.

Daniel DeLawder, chairman of Park National, said: "This is an ideal way for us to provide our clients access to new options, like rewards programs, 24/7 service, online account information, and our merchant clients can more easily accept transactions through the internet. These types of alliances ensure that our relationship with our clients and the dependable, high-touch service they've come to expect from their local bank, will not change."

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