Broadcom Founder Invests in Smart Cards.

Henry Samueli has bought many technology companies for Broadcom Corp., the high-flying chipmaker he co-founded. Now he's acquired a personal stake in a bank with big ambitions for electronic transactions.

Samueli has become an investor in Irvine-based Commercial Capital Bank, a company emerging from the recent acquisition of Riverside-based Mission Savings and Loan by Financial Institutional Partners Mortgage Co. of Irvine.

Bank officials declined to say how much of Commercial Capital Bancorp Samueli owns, other than to call his stake significant. Mission recently was renamed Commercial Capital Bank and moved to Irvine, just a couple of blocks from Broadcom's base in the Irvine Spectrum.

Mission's purchase price of $4.8 million was relatively low compared with other deals that Samueli has been involved with. But what the bank's executives have planned could be a big play -- a chip-based smart debit card that could allow for secure, real-time payments via the Internet.

"This will create the means of enabling online debit transactions on the Internet," said Stephen Gordon, chairman and chief executive of Commercial Capital Bank. "This online payment methodology cannot be utilized today unless you're going through off-line credit-card associations."

Gordon said the bank is looking to raise $75 million in funding from investors other than Samueli. Gordon pointed out that the bank has other "major individual and institutional investors" but declined to identify them.

A Broadcom spokesperson said the bank is a personal investment of Samueli, and that Broadcom is not involved.

Samueli, whose stake in Broadcom is worth about $8 billion, was unavailable for comment. (Separately, Broadcom said earlier this month that it's buying British chipmaker Element 14 for about $595 million.)

Alternative to credit

Gordon owns 9.7 percent of Commercial Capital Bank, according to the federal government's Office of Thrift Supervision. Two other company executives, Treasurer Scott Kavanaugh and David DePillo, the bank's president and chief operating officer, have 7 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively.

The executives established Commercial Capital Bancorp in the wake of the Mission Savings and Loan acquisition earlier this year. It is a holding company for Commercial Capital Bank and Financial Institutional Partners Mortgage. The latter is described as the state's fourth-largest lender for apartment buildings.

But the big bet is expected to be the bank's smart debit cards. While the vast majority, of the world's commerce is done through cash, checks and bank wires, credit cards rule on the Internet, Gordon said.

"The Internet system is forcing on consumers a different payment methodology than they prefer," he said.

But some people are apprehensive about using their credit cards online, Gordon said, because they want privacy and they don't want their credit-card numbers stored online.

A consumer who goes online typically can click on four payment methods -- American Express, Visa, Master Card and Discover. Gordon envisions a consumer clicking on a fifth method -- the smart debit card.

"This will create the fifth button -- the card that uses an encrypted digital signature," Gordon said. "It would bypass Visa, Master Card, American Express and Discover."

Other companies are developing smart cards or others means of online payments, such as VeriSign Inc. of Mountain View, and Plano, Texas-based Entrust Technologies Inc.