NEWS

Seeking Members: Institute for Payment Professionals

Recognizing a need for qualified and educated sales professionals who understand merchants' point-of-sale requirements, two payment industry veterans, Paul Martaus and Brett Mansdorf, have formed a new educational forum called the Institute for Payment Professionals (IPP). IPP is an educational resource that will provide industry information through local seminars and the Internet. IPP is developing a Web site offering resources to help support sales efforts such as white papers, FAQ's and a Q&A with industry experts. IPP membership will cost $25 a year; training sessions will be priced at $35 for members and $100 for non-members. IPP is planning a road show of seminars at major U.S. cities beginning in Dallas on November 15, 2003. Look for further information to come.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Clearing House Turns 150

The Clearing House celebrated 150 years in the payments business on October 3, 2003. Established in 1853 to simplify the exchange of checks and improve the efficiency of the payments system, it now manages and operates the Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS), the National Check Exchange and the SVPCo businesses as well as the Electronic Payments Network (EPN) and Electronic Clearing Services (ECS). The Clearing House is owned by the U.S. commercial banking affiliates of ABN AMRO, Bank of America, The Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Fleet National Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Wachovia and Wells Fargo.

Certegy Part of Visa POS Check Program

Certegy Check Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Certegy Inc., is participating in the Visa POS Check Service program as both an acquiring processor and a third-party check authorization source for Visa. Certegy provides warranty, verification and collection services for retail merchants. The Visa POS Check Service program routes check transactions directly to the financial institution where the consumer's demand deposit account resides for authorization and settlement. When Visa does not have access to the financial institution, checks are routed to a third-party authorizer, such as Certegy.

Two Announce Compliance with Visa CISP

Visa U.S.A recently recognized eProcessingNetwork and SLIM CD, Inc. for being compliant with its Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP). eProcessingNetwork is a full-service Internet payment gateway that offers Internet, retail, MOTO, mobile PDA and cell phone, credit card and check processing and an optional integrated shopping cart. SLIM CD offers POS software for retail, restaurant, hotel, auto rental, direct marketing and e-commerce merchants that supports both credit and PIN debit transactions.

Visa Awards Fifth Third Bank for Quality

Visa recognized Fifth Third Bank Processing Solutions with its 2003 Member Service Quality Performance Awards. The awards are for the lowest duplicate transaction rate, highest copy request fulfillment rate and lowest chargeback-to-sales ratio among credit card processors. Fifth Third has won the lowest chargeback-to-sales ratio award eight years in a row, and the highest copy fulfillment rate award seven times. Fifth Third processes 8.2 billion ATM and POS transactions each year for more than 190,000 retail locations and financial institutions.

SVPCo To Sponsor Check Image Study

Small Value Payments Company, LLC, or SVPCo, announced it will co-sponsor a 16-week study to determine whether less expensive black and white images used in check processing provide the right level of usability, or if grayscale, which provides a higher definition image, will be more cost effective in the long run for handling exceptions, detecting fraud, and providing customer service. Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) is conducting the research. The U.S. Federal Reserve is also a sponsor of the study.

WesPay Awards Donato and Grommesh

The Western Payments Alliance recognized Frank Donato, Senior Vice President of City National Bank in Los Angeles, and Mike Grommesh, Senior Vice President of The Golden 1 Credit Union in Sacramento, for their lifetime contributions to the payments industry at Payments Symposium 2003 held in San Francisco on September 30. Both are members of WesPay's Board of Directors. Donato received the George E. Lowther Award for Outstanding Service to the Payments Industry. Grommesh received the Richard Johnson Award for his work in representing credit unions in WesPay's recent dues restructuring and in planning and launching The Payments Symposium.

PARTNERSHIPS

Albertson's Picks TeleCheck

First Data Corp. will provide its TeleCheck Services, Inc. check verification and recovery services to all Albertsons, Inc. store locations. Albertson's operates approximately 2,300 retail stores across the U.S., including Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Acme, Sav-on Drugs, Osco Drug, Albertsons-Osco, Albertsons-Sav-on, Max Foods and Super Saver.

Food Lion Renews with Global Axcess

Nationwide Money Services, subsidiary of Global Axcess Corp., extended its contract with U.S. supermarket chain Food Lion, LLC (subsidiary of Delhaize America), to continue providing ATM equipment, transaction processing, maintenance, monitoring and cash management services at all Food Lion and Kash n'Karry stores through April 30, 2011. Food Lion has 1,200 stores in 11 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and 140 Kash n'Karry supermarkets throughout central Florida. Nationwide Money owns and operates 725 ATMs in Food Lion/Kash n'Karry locations, and plans to expand its ATM network to include more than 1,300 within the next 36 months.

Cardinals Win with GO Software

Major League Baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, manages credit card processing of ticket sales with GO Software's payment processing solution, RiTA (Rapid Transaction Authority). The software helps the organization manage online, telephone and walkup ticket sales year round, but was specifically implemented to manage credit card transactions for its two busiest days of the year: the day tickets for regular season games first become available and the day playoff tickets first become available. The Cardinals said it plans to expand the use of RiTA into other systems, including merchandise, season magazine subscriptions and club membership sales.

MFA Oil Picks Lynk

Lynk Systems, Inc. will provide MFA Oil Company with electronic payment processing for credit, debit, prepaid and EBT cards. MFA Oil will also use Lynk's proprietary FuelLynk fleet program with its Preferred and Petro-Card 24 cards. MFA Oil will use Lynk's solutions, including PetroTrans, in conjunction with VeriFone Inc.'s Tranz 380 point-of-sale (POS) terminals and VeriFone's Ruby SuperSystem where appropriate.

MSI NJ, Global eTelecom Renew Deal

Global eTelecom, Inc. has renewed an agreement with Merchant Services, Inc. (MSI NJ) where it will continue to provide back-engine processing and support for MSI NJ's Electronic Check Conversion program.

NPC Wins QSR Hardee's

National Processing Company, LLC signed a multi-year credit card processing agreement with Hardee's Food Systems, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of CKE Restaurants. NPC will provide Hardee's with authorization and settlement services for Visa and MasterCard transactions accepted at all corporate-owned Hardee's locations and participating franchise locations. Hardee's owns and operates more than 2,100 company and franchise-owned quick-service restaurants in 31 states and 11 foreign countries.

Payment Data and Network 1 Partner

Payment Data Systems, Inc. signed a multi-year agreement with Network 1 Financial, a wholly owned operating company of Verus Financial Management, to provide credit card authorization and settlement services and sponsorship into Visa's ISO and MasterCard's MSP programs. Payment Data will extend credit card merchant services to all of its customers. Verus will have access to Payment Data's payment processing, which includes $600 million worth of credit card transaction value.

PRE Soltions Expanding Partnerships

PRE Solutions, Inc. partnered with Coinstar Inc. to deliver its prepaid consumer products, including prepaid wireless, long distance, Internet, and Web content, through self-service Coinstar Centers and TOP-UP kiosks. PRE Solutions has also teamed with Brightstar,, a wireless distributor and value-added service provider, to provide retailers with solutions for prepaid wireless products and services at the point of sale.

Paymentech Signs Ford and Yaga

Paymentech, L.P. will provide electronic payment processing services to nearly 5,000 Ford Motor Company dealerships in the U.S. Paymentech is now the preferred processor for Ford's system-wide FORDSTAR Charge and Check Services Program. Ford's full transition to Paymentech processing is targeted for completion in the fourth quarter of 2003. Paymentech is also offering Yaga's Digital Content Commerce Solution to its online merchant customers so they can more easily sell both physical and digital content at the same time, such as news articles, music or software from their Web sites. Yaga and Paymentech have several mutual clients in the media and entertainment space. One is Tribune Media Services (TMS), the largest syndicate of news, comics and puzzles on the Web.

APPOINTMENTS

Vital Recruits VIP Payment Exec

Vital Processing Services appointed Kathy Crumley as Vice President of Vital Integration Partners (VIP) Program. Crumley will build and manage the new VIP program. She has 15 years of payment and merchant services experience and most recently served as Vice President of the Global Alliance Channel for Hypercom Corp.

Welcome Appoints CEO for Americas Region

Welcome Real-time appointed Connie Festa as CEO of Welcome's Americas region, covering the U.S., Canada and Latin America. Festa has been serving in the position since July 2003. She has 24 years' experience as a top sales executive responsible for establishing North American operations for a number of payment systems companies, including Keycorp (Australia), Bull's EFT/POS division (France), International Verifact Inc. (Canada) and ICL (UK). Festa has also served on the ETA's Technology Committee for six years and on the Planning Committee.

CardWare Int'l. Hires EVP Sales

Shelly Laird joined CardWare International as Executive Vice President of Sales. Laird previously worked at Fifth Third Retail Merchant Services where she was responsible for small market sales and sales management. She has 14 years' experience in operations, sales and client and sales management with Frigidaire Financial Corp. and Bank of America.

Quiroz Joins Cynergy Data

Merchant acquirer Cynergy Data hired Peggy Quiroz as a Technical Support Supervisor. Quiroz has more than 10 years of experience in the bankcard industry. She started out as a Sales Coordinator for Lipman USA, Inc., and was promoted to Customer Service Rep to Manager and then to Account Manager. She has a background in platform training, workshop facilitation, budgeting and human resources.

BOTTOM LINES

• ConocoPhillips is selling its Circle K Corp. to Alimentation Couche-Tard, Inc. Circle K has 1,663 retail stores in 16 states.
• A Bank One economist predicts 2003 holiday sales will increase more than 6% from last season (more than double the pace of last year) because of tax cuts, union bonuses and easy credit.
• Retailers across all categories reported better than expected sales in Sept. 2003 for the third straight month. The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd.'s same-store sales tally of 77 stores increased 5.9% for Sept., the strongest gain since March 2002, which was 6.4%.