Credit Cards Online Information

The Fiserv CBS Worldwide unit of Fiserv, Inc. (Nasdaq:FISV) introduced its global credit card software, MetaCard(TM), at the Lafferty Cards and Payments Conference in Amsterdam. Fiserv demonstrated MetaCard's ability to balance credit card risk while growing profits, providing industry experts their first glimpse of the software. MetaCard software is not available in the United States.

Alex Groenendyk, President, Fiserv CBS Worldwide, said credit cards represent a significant revenue opportunity for financial institutions, and MetaCard offers a cost-effective way to help those institutions capture that market.

"Credit card portfolios are one of the best performing assets for an issuer, often producing a 25 percent to 50 percent return on investment," he said. "The investment we've made in MetaCard is part of our ongoing approach to providing clients with comprehensive solutions that help them keep a leading position in their markets."

A 20-year veteran of the credit card industry and a Vice President at Fiserv, Carol Cowan leads the MetaCard team, and said MetaCard's robust features and flexibility are unique in the market.

"MetaCard's ability to launch virtually any product, track fulfillment and monitor fraud means financial institutions will no longer have to sacrifice growing profits for the sake of managing risk."

Cowan spoke at the Lafferty conference and described best practices in managing credit card fraud, an issue that increases financial institutions' expenses 1 percent to 7 percent every year and directly impacts profitability.

In 2001, Fiserv CBS Worldwide strategically entered the credit card industry by purchasing the hard and soft assets of a proven credit card system. Fiserv combined its retail banking expertise with the knowledge capital from the acquisition to develop a global solution, MetaCard.

MetaCard manages all facets of a credit card program through issuer and acquirer functions, fraud alert, loyalty programs and authorizations. MetaCard is available as fully integrated or modular software for multi-bank and multi-product processing, allowing financial institutions to grow their presence in the credit card market cost effectively and at their own pace.

With features such as private-label processing, major purchase plans, transaction-based pricing and full card issuance, MetaCard issuer functionality allows financial institutions the flexibility to be creative with their credit card products. MetaCard also allows multiple loyalty programs to work with both the issuer and acquirer modules. The fraud alert and authorizations modules are rules-based systems designed to give the institution maximum control of risk management.

MetaCard's client/server architecture offers a Windows-based interface with the performance, stability and cost effectiveness of the iSeries platform.

Fiserv CBS Worldwide is a unit of Fiserv, Inc. that delivers end-to-end business and technology solutions for financial institutions. Through its offices in Orlando, London, Singapore, Beijing, Warsaw, and Bogota, Fiserv CBS Worldwide enables more than 200 financial institutions to deliver core processing and personalized customer relationship management solutions and servicing through multiple channels.