eFunds and IBM Partner to Deliver Enterprise Payments & Fraud Management Solution on System Z

New Delhi, March 5th, 2007 – eFunds Corporation (NYSE: EFD), the company that delivers innovative payment processing and information intelligence solutions, today announced the availability of an integrated solution for enterprise payments, transaction data insight and fraud management. Delivered through the recently signed IBM® Banking Industry Alliance, the solution will enable global banking and financial services customers to improve the efficiency of enterprise payments and fraud management on a single IBM System z deployment.

Financial institutions, payment networks and processors face challenges in keeping pace with regulatory requirements, fraud, emerging channel opportunities like prepaid, and customer service enhancement, all while driving down costs of platform maintenance, operations and service expansion. Through a single enterprise payments and fraud management infrastructure optimized for System z, it is now possible to take a business-driven, enterprise view of payments designed to drive new sources of profitability.

“In addition to optimizing the costs of their payment processing infrastructure across multiple lines of business, financial services companies are looking at new ways to leverage the value of transaction data to provide deeper business insight into their customers’ needs,” said Gwenn Bezard, research director, Aite Group. “Over time, Aite Group believes that institutions will be able to use this insight to drive increased revenue through service expansion and customer cross-sell and up-sell throughout the entire payment account lifecycle.”

eFunds’ Enterprise Payments Platform on System z – comprising CONNEXä, IST®/Switch, DataNavigator®, FraudManager and Enterprise View – enables financial services customers to optimize the efficiency of their payments operations, while capitalizing on the business value of transaction data offering key insights into customer profitability and cross-selling opportunities.

Enabling eFunds’ Enterprise Payments Platform on the IBM eServerä zSeries®, including Linux®, WebSphere application integration middleware, J2EE open industry standards, and Information on Demand data storage solutions like DB2 Universal Databaseä, all robustly managed through Tivoli®, will help customers consolidate legacy payments operations and technology. Customers will also be better positioned to leverage the proven resiliency and security of the System z, with all the long-term benefits of a modern, open systems architecture.

“This integrated solution offering on System z is our next logical step with IBM, after the signing of our global Banking Industry Alliance in November 2006,” said Paul F. Walsh, chairman and chief executive officer, eFunds Corporation. “As partners, we are looking at the needs of joint clients around the world, all of whom are telling us that they need to drive down costs while transforming their payments business into a profit center. The Enterprise Payments Platform on System z solution is our response to that need.”

"Customers have consistently embraced our continuing hardware/software investments that keep the System z in a class by itself for raw power, security and low total cost of ownership,” said June Felix, General Manager, Banking Solutions, IBM. “By delivering end-to-end open systems options for software applications and software – both Native and Linux – optimized to industry standard SOA architecture and middleware, IBM is simplifying difficult IT decisions in financial services. Our partnership and optimization investments with eFunds is one very clear and powerful example – our customers need not make sacrifices to gain advantages in IT efficiency, security and performance while addressing very critical business issues in cross-payment fraud and customer profitability."

Please join eFunds, IBM and Aite Group at our upcoming Transforming Data into Customer Insight Summit, scheduled for the late April timeframe in New York City. For more information, please contact eFunds at USMarketing@efunds.com.


a About eFunds

With more than 30 years of payment processing and information intelligence expertise, eFunds delivers flexible, innovative solutions to the world's leading businesses. Leveraging mission-critical business insight, eFunds enables financial services companies, retailers, and government organizations to grow their businesses while reducing transaction and infrastructure costs, detecting potential fraud and building long-term customer value. eFunds’ flexible delivery model means solutions can be run in-house, outsourced or anything in between, helping customers balance the need for control with operational efficiency and low cost of ownership. From the point of account opening to the settlement of every transaction – debit, credit, or prepaid – eFunds helps businesses win more of the right customers, serve them more efficiently and keep them. www.efunds.com


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