Brussels, 23 November 2005. Today, the Board of Directors of EUFISERV adapted the strategic policy of the company to take full advantage of the new opportunities that result from imminent structural changes in the card payment industry.  The company is restructured to enable the delivery of card payment processing services at market conditions to any relevant organisation and no longer only to its own Shareholders.  In addition, the Board completed the changes to its governance removing from its Statutes all articles limiting the shareholding in the company to Savings Banks or Savings Banks owned companies. EUFISERV Shareholding is now open to all financial institutions.

With this strategic move, EUFISERV is ready for the advent of the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA), the creation of which is demanded by the European Regulators such as the European Commission and the European Central Bank. In SEPA, the European consumer shall be able to make payments throughout the whole Euro area by using one card as easily and safely as a national card payment is today. In order to achieve this, it is expected that several of today’s national card payment schemes will interlink with other schemes beyond their borders. As a first, the German banking community have already announced that they will remove all borders to allow interested banks to participate in their debit card scheme.  Also VISA and MasterCard are expected to revise their product strategies for SEPA.

Today the Board of Directors of EUFISERV has made it clear that the company is committed to play its full role in the creation of the SEPA.  The Board levelled the playing field by opening the shareholding to all financial institutions. Furthermore, the Board committed to support banks and schemes who seek compliance with the SEPA Cards Framework (SCF) as elaborated by the European Payments Council (EPC).  The EPC is a body created by the banks in Europe for creating the SEPA through self-regulation.  The SCF outlines high level principles to which banks and financial institutions must comply.

Mr. Petter N. Johansen, Managing Director of EUFISERV, said that this strategic decision of the company’s Board of Directors is more than just bringing in line the company’s legal framework with the expected new situation within the SEPA.  "EUFISERV is very well positioned to deliver to the banks many of the new services and facilities that need to be constructed for the creation of a SEPA.  We expect SEPA to cause a boost in the demand for our services. For the past 15 years we have been interlinking banks and bank processors as well as providing easy access to the global card payment networks."

EUFISERV will support existing specifications such as the Berlin Group Specification as well as emerging SEPA standards, making it particularly easy for banks to process the card transactions of the card scheme(s) of their preference. Working together EUFISERV will enable banks to deliver in time to their customers the payment card products that will meet the SEPA market requirements.

Note to the Editor:

EUFISERV s.c.r.l. is a card payments processor that manages the EUFISERV Network, processing cross-border ATM cash withdrawals and point of sale transactions between its users.  It is a Brussels based company owned by retail banks from fourteen different countries and by the European Savings Banks Group (ESBG). Its mission is to develop, maintain and operate international financial services for the whole financial industry.

Today, it operates a Europe-wide information technology infrastructure allowing more than 70 million banks cardholders to withdraw local currency from over 60,000 ATMs.  In addition, EUFISERV has Gateways to the systems of Visa International, MasterCard, American Express and, since very recently, also to China UnionPay allowing banks to also accept these cards at their ATMs.  In addition, these Gateways allow banks to equip their customers with ATM card services of these organizations.

More information can be found at www.eufiserv.com.

Contact

Mr. Petter N. Johansen

Managing Director

EUFISERV scrl

Maria Theresiastraat 11/1

B - 1000 Brussels

+32 2 663 0219