NEWS

Equifax Ranks #3 in InformationWeek 500

Equifax Inc. ranked third overall in the 2005 InformationWeek 500, a listing of the nation's largest and most innovative providers of information technology. For the fourth consecutive year, Equifax was recognized as a top 25 IT innovator among the 500 companies spotlighted in the listing.

Online Merchants Miss $5.5 Billion Opportunity

In the 2005 PaymentOne Annual Consumer Payment Poll, 78% of consumers polled said they would be more inclined to make a purchase online if given a safer, more convenient payment method than a credit card. This is up from 76% a year ago and 61% in 2003. More than half (54%) said they curtail their online shopping because of fears that their privacy or financial information will be abused or stolen.

The data suggest that nearly half of consumers are willing to spend more for monthly services due to the convenience of using their existing billing relationship. PaymentOne extrapolated the potential revenue impact and found that merchants are collectively losing nearly $5.5 billion in revenue. For a copy of the results, visit www.paymentone.com/2005poll .

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Checkgateway Module Vital-approved

Checkgateway received Vital Processing Services' Class-B approval for its credit card processing module. Checkgateway now enables credit card processing on its payment gateway.

Federated Payments Celebrates Milestones

Federated Payments recently celebrated its two-year anniversary and boarded its 10,000th merchant. With almost 100 employees, Federated Payments has outgrown its present corporate location and plans to relocate to a 30,000 square-foot facility next spring.

Hypercom Restructures Latin American Region

Hypercom Corp. restructured its Latin American operations with the establishment of two regional headquarters in Mexico City and Brazil. The offices replace Hypercom's former Latin American regional head-quarters in Miami. The Mexico City headquarters will serve Mexico, Central America and the Andean countries of South America. Managing Director for the new regional operation is Juan Suayfeta. The new Brazil headquarters will cover the South Cone region of South America. Hypercom promoted Reinaldo Assis to Managing Director of that region.

JCB Joins Global PED Requirements

JCB joined MasterCard International's and Visa International's efforts to align PIN entry device (PED) security requirements and approval procedures. MasterCard and Visa previously agreed to support common standards, which they put into effect October 2004. They hope the standard will simplify testing processes, reduce costs and provide a wider selection of PED products to financial institutions.

Pay By Touch Solutions Closes $130 Million

Pay By Touch Solutions secured $130 million in new financing. The company also acquired the assets of ATM Direct, including its patent-pending software solution that allows online shoppers to use their PIN debit or ATM cards. Also, the company recently changed its name from Pay By Touch to Pay By Touch Solutions.

Pipeline Data Inc. Receives $2 Million

Pipeline Data Inc. entered into a $2 million financing arrangement with Centrecourt Asset Management LLC. The funds will enable Pipeline Data to acquire merchant portfolios. The company also submitted an application to list its securities on the American Stock Exchange. Until the application is accepted, the company's shares will continue to trade on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board, or OTCBB.

RBS Lynk Certifies Terminals for IP Processing

RBS Lynk completed certification of a variety of terminals for Internet protocol processing of ATM transaction data for the ATM distributor and retail markets. The terminals certified include the Diebold ix Series; NCR Corp.'s Personas and EasyPoint series; Tidel's 3100, 3400 and 3600; and the Tranax 2500.

Terminals Direct Relocates

Terminals Direct relocated its corporate headquarters to 3824 S. Evans Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85714. Located in the city's warehouse district, Terminals Direct's new facility features 10,000 square feet of warehouse space, which will accommodate more than 20 employees and more than $2 million worth of POS equipment and supplies. The company's phone number will remain the same.

Visa Celebrates 1 Million ATMs

The number of ATMs in the Visa global ATM network has increased significantly over the past 20 years. In early 1985 there were 13,000 ATMs in six countries. Currently, there are 1 million ATMs in 90 countries.

ViVOtech Secures $18.25 Million

ViVOtech raised $18.25 million in Series-B funding. Draper Fisher Jurveston is leading the round. Also participating are Nokia Growth Partners, DFJ Gotham and previous investor Alloy Ventures.

PARTNERSHIPS

America First Renews CheckFree Service

CheckFree Corp. announced a three-year contract extension with America First Credit Union to continue as its electronic billing and payment provider. America First's electronic billing and payment service, Payment Partner, has been free to members and made available through the bank's technology partnership with CheckFree for more than five years.

Axalto and Infineon Announce Cross-licensing Agreement

Axalto and Infineon Technologies entered into a nonexclusive cross-licensing agreement that grants each other license rights regarding some of their respective patents in the field of smart cards with enhanced connectivity. This agreement will enable Infineon to provide its customers with new smart integrated circuits and modules and Axalto to provide its customers with new smart cards and applications.

Comdata, Allpoint to Provide Surcharge-free Access

Comdata Corp. signed an agreement with Allpoint Network to offer a surcharge-free network option to its Comchek eCash pay card customers. The service gives cardholders surcharge-free access to Allpoint's U.S. network of more than 32,000 ATMs.

Columbia Bank and NationalCard Sign Agreement

NationalCard Processing Systems signed a multiyear credit card processing agreement with Columbia Bank of New Jersey. NationalCard will convert all existing bank merchants and bank branches to NationalCard's processing platform. Additionally, NationalCard will provide direct sales and marketing support to introduce Columbia's credit card merchant service provider to its existing Demand Deposit Accounts throughout the state.

CO-OP Transfers ATM Check Images

CO-OP Network, in partnership with California Center Credit Union, eFunds Corp., WesCorp and NCR, successfully captured, imaged, proofed and cleared its first digital check image from an ATM. The technology will be available to CO-OP Network members in first quarter 2006.

E4X Adds PayPal

E4X Inc. added PayPal payment service to enable merchants to accept multicurrency PayPal payments. PayPal offers payments in six currencies: U.S., Canadian and Australian dollars; pounds; euros; and yen. With the addition of PayPal, E4X now supports a range of payment methods in local currencies, including credit and debit cards, direct debits, checks, bank transfers and invoices.

Global Payments Provides Solutions for Alpha Card Services

Global Payments Inc. formed an agreement with Alpha Card Services Inc. Global Payments will provide Alpha Card with a comprehensive suite of merchant card processing solutions, including authorization, capture, settlement and BIN sponsorship.

Hypercom Becomes IRN's Preferred Provider; Places Terminals in Russia

IRN Payment Systems selected Hypercom's T7Plus credit/debit card terminal for use in its free merchant equipment program. IRN also named Hypercom as its preferred terminal vendor. For IRN's free terminal program, IRN will have the T7Plus units configured to support credit, debit, EBT, gift card and loyalty card transactions as well as IRN's proprietary Paid On Signing check debit processing solution. The IRN program gives ISOs a $100 signing bonus for each free terminal they place, plus a 60% share of transaction revenues.

In other news, Visa in Russia now offers Hypercom's Optimum T2100 card payment terminal to banks and retailers throughout Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. So far 22 banks in Russia are issuing Visa smart cards.

Since the introduction of the Visa Smart Breakthrough Acceptance Device Program, the migration of electronic POS terminals to the EMV standard has surged from 750,000 in 2002 to more than 2 million in 2004.

MasterCard and Cardtronics Provide Surcharge-free ATMs

MasterCard and Cardtronics Inc. formed an agree-ment to create a surcharge-free ATM program. Effective immediately, issuers of MasterCard- , Maestro- and/or Cirrus-branded debit cards will be able to offer cardholders surcharge-free cash withdrawals at more than 25,000 Cardtronics ATM locations throughout the nation.

Vital Renews Agreement With BofA

Vital Processing Services renewed its merchant processing service agreement with Bank of America N.A. (BofA). The agreement continues the relation-ship between the two companies, with Vital providing full service transaction processing and related support services.

ACQUISITIONS

Heartland to Repurchase Merchant Portfolio

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. repurchased a merchant portfolio from Certegy Inc. that consists of approximately 2,400 accounts. The purchase price was $3 million. Heartland originally transferred this portfolio to Certegy in November 2000, and Heartland retained the responsibility for servicing the transferred accounts.

Metavante Completes Acquisition, Plans Another

Metavante Corp. completed its acquisition of Brasfield Corp. The company will become a Metavante subsidiary and continue to operate under the Brasfield name. Brasfield provides core banking processing and customer service to community banks that license and use Bankway software from Kirchman Corp., a Metavante company. Metavante also signed a merger agreement to acquire LINK2GOV Corp. LINK2GOV Corp. will continue to operate under the name of LINK2GOV and will become a subsidiary of Metavante. Existing management will continue in their positions. The company expects the acquisition to close in the fourth quarter.

Optimal Acquires Assets From Moneris

Optimal Payments Corp. acquired a portfolio of U.S. merchant processing contracts and sales channel contracts from Moneris Solutions Inc. for $18 million. The portfolio is comprised of 6,500 U.S.-based merchants processing in excess of $1.5 billion of credit and debit card and electronic benefits payments, annually. The acquired sales channel comprises approximately 50 ISOs.

APPOINTMENTS

Wachovia Hires Director of Network Management

Karen Curtin joined Wachovia Corp.'s General Bank Distribution team as Director of Network Management. Curtin will lead Wachovia's network planning efforts for its 3,100 financial centers and more than 5,000 ATMs. A 22-year banking veteran, Curtin joins Wachovia from Washington Mutual, where most recently she led that company's advertising, brand management and innovation programs.

First Data Elects Ellwood to Board

Peter B. Ellwood has been unanimously elected to First Data Corp.'s Board of Directors. Ellwood is the former Group Chief Executive Officer at Lloyds TSB, a position he held from 1997 to 2003. He joined TSB Bank as Chief Executive, Retail Banking in 1989 and became Group Chief Executive in 1992. Following the merger with Lloyds Bank in 1995, Ellwood became Deputy Group CEO of Lloyds TSB.

Hypercom Appoints New Senior VP

Neil P. Hudd joined Hypercom in the newly created post of Senior Vice President, Global Product Marketing. Hudd brings more than 20 years of experience in the POS and ATM terminals business to Hypercom. For three years prior to joining Hypercom he held the dual positions of President, Americas Sales and Vice President, Strategic Initiatives for Way Systems Inc. Hudd previously served as Founder and President of Veritop Inc., a mobile payment POS vendor. Prior to this, he was President of NBS Transaction Systems Inc.

TransFirst Names Phelan VP of Sales

Michael Phelan was named Vice President of Sales for TransFirst's ePayment Services division. Prior to joining TransFirst, Phelan served as Vice President of Business Development of the Wealth Management Group at First National Bank.

During his 18-year tenure with First National Bank, Phelan also held various other management positions including General Manager of Collection Corp. of America and Senior Vice President for First National Merchant Solutions.

Diebold Elects Board Member

Alan J. Weber has been elected to Diebold Inc.'s Board of Directors. Weber recently retired as Chairman and CEO of U.S. Trust Corp. and as a member of the Executive Committee of The Charles Schwab Corp.

Prior to joining U.S. Trust in October 2002, Weber was Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer at Aetna Inc. He also held a number of senior-level positions at Citibank N.A., where he worked from 1971 to 1998, including Chairman of Citibank International and Executive Vice President of Citibank.