A group of private equity investors led by former Apple CEO John Sculley bought Indentrus last fall and have expanded its business goals. If they’re successful, the order-to-pay business, also called financial logistics, could get a needed shot in the arm.

Identrus—now called Identrust—had been a so-called root certificate authority, selling digital certificates to financial services companies. Under its new ownership, Indentrust will also be selling a managed, turnkey certificate capability to order-to-pay companies and their customers.

Digital certificates are the standard means of securely identifying online parties to each other, and if they’re widely adopted by the order-to-pay community—a group now confined to large corporations like General Electric—they could greatly expand that community by ensuring that the counterparties are who they say they are and minimizing the prospects of fraudulent transactions.

That would conceivably encourage more companies to use the concept, and if order-to-pay does finally get a significant foothold in the treasury-management operations of many corporations, it could transform the payments industry by automating a large fraction of the payments that shuttle back and forth between those firms.

Since most of those payments are expected to be sent via the automated clearinghouse, widespread adoption of order-to-pay would squeeze many business checks out of the payments system.

It would also accelerate the velocity of payments, since order-to-pay systems—there are at least ten of them, including products from US Bank, Bottomline Technologies, Harbor Payments and Xign—pay invoices when presented, instead of within as many as 90 days, as the game is currently paid.

That, in turn, would take the broader economy in unknown directions, since it would increase the liquidity and transparency of the users’ balance sheets, and make more money available to those companies for business purposes. That phenomenon is a good example of how technology not only improves business operations, but also changes both the nature and effects of that business.

The key to broadening order-to-pay has always been the authorization issue; it’s simply too easy to send the wrong person millions of dollars. Digital certificates are the standard solution to that issue, but the technical and administrative challenges they present to users have put a crimp in certificates’ widespread adoption outside of the financial services arena.

Resolving those technical and administrative problems is how Identrust plans to make its living, says Andrea Klein, the company’s chief marketing officer.

“The company has been re-focused on the corporate market,” she says. “Companies can put in a system themselves, but so far, we’ve seen that they want us to run it for them.” Identrust will use its large data center to administer those certificate operations for its customers, she adds.

Indentrust was created in 1999 as the Global Trust Organization by a group of large banks, including CitiGroup and ABN AMRO, to be their root certificate authority, or basic issuing organization. In 2002, it bought the Digital Certificate Trust Company from Zions BanCorporation and the American Banker’s Association. Fifty-five financial institutions use Indentrust digital certificates.

The company was supposed to have been profitable, but never really got there, despite its long reach into the financial services community and the company’s later expansion into issuing certificates to the U.S. government. “They just couldn’t figure out how to be profitable,” says Klein. “Their expertise is in how to do the business of banking, not in launching entrepreneurial companies.”

The new ownership—all entrepreneurial business people—may change that. Last summer, an investor group including Rho Capital Partners—where Sculley is a venture partner—and Enterprise Partners bought the company for $20 million from the original owners. Sculley is chairman, and Karen Wendel, Identrust’s long-time CEO, kept her office. Enterprise is represented by managing director Carl Eibl. Jean Levine, an independent investor, is also involved, and Zions retains a stake in the firm.

One indication Identrust now has a good shot at profitability: TWIST (the Transaction Workflow Innovation Standards Team) has incorporated Identrust’s digital certificates into their supply chain standards. TWIST is a nonprofit group that sets global, XML-based standards for wholesale financial transactions, commercial payments and collections, and cash-management processes.

The combination of the new ownership, its expansion into order-to-pay, and Identrust’s willingness to administer certificates for their customers may turn the company around, says Penny Gillespie, president of Gillespie International.

“If the market isn’t ready (to widely adopt certificate authentication), it should be, but two things have had to come into alignment for that to happen,” she says. “The market has had to realize it has a need, and the product has to be easy to use. It just can’t be as cumbersome as it has been in the past. If (administration) is outsourced, and not cumbersome to the user, it could be a very good idea.” (Contact: Identrust, Andrea Klein, 415-848-2527; Gillespie International, Penny Gillespie, 703-815-0706)