National Processing Co.

National Processing Co. and FIST-Madison Financial have joined forces to offer merchant processing services to small businesses. FISI senior vice president John Murphy said the agreement would permit financial institutions to offer "innovative and cost-effective" credit-card financing to their small-business clients. National Processing Co., an 87 percent owned subsidiary of National City Corp., is a Cleveland-based $85 billion holding company that currently supports about 500,000 merchant locations. FISI, a subsidiary of Cendant Corp., has provided marketing services to financial institutions for 30 years.