Alpha Bank Goes Live With Cardinal’s Platform
Mentor, Ohio – November 5, 2002: CardinalCommerce Corporation announced that Alpha Bank, Athens, Greece, has completed the implementation of Cardinal’s Payment Authentication Platform software for its card issuing and transaction acquiring business. This implementation was completed in connection with Alpha Bank’s adoption of the Verified by Visa online authentication standards. Alpha Bank is the official bank of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and the acquirer for the 2004 Olympic ticket sales website. A major card issuer and acquirer in Greece, Alpha has 2.6 million customers, 1.5 million active card accounts, over 70,000 merchants, and 30,000 POS terminals. Alpha operates more than 500 branches throughout Greece and around the world.
“We are pleased to be the first bank in Greece to offer Verified by Visa online authentication”, stated Mr. Leonidas Kassoumis, Card Division Manager of Alpha Bank. “Our decision to proceed with the CardinalCommerce platform is based on the track record of Delta Singular, which has been our card processor since 1988. We have one more reason to endorse the Verified by Visa authentication: we are the Official Bank of the Athens 2004 Olympics, and we will handle acquisition of all Olympic card transactions. Ticket sales will start in the middle of 2003, and many of these will go through the Internet. The 2004 Games will provide an exciting opportunity to promote the Verified by Visa authentication in both issuing and acquiring.”
Cardinal and several partners, including Delta Singular, the largest Visa and MasterCard processor in southeastern Europe, WorldWide Trust and Safe3w, a provider of strong authentication products, recently formed a consortium to market online secure payment solutions in Europe. This consortium recently established a new partnership with nCipher (LSE-NCH) and has applied nCipher’s security technology to enhance their payment authentication solution. Kenneth Bob, CEO of Safe3w, commented, “By adopting this system, Alpha Bank demonstrates leadership in the European payment industry. We look forward to other financial institutions sharing their vision of providing a more secure e-commerce experience for their cardholders and merchants.”
“We are pleased to have the system live and running, and we salute Alpha Bank’s leadership in introducing new products and services to its customers”, stated Andreas Drimiotis, chairman of Delta Singular. “As one of the 34 banks that we service in the issuing and acquiring domain, Alpha has always been a leader. Delta Singular has provided card-related services since 1988, and we look forward to continued cooperation with all of the partners in this exciting venture.”
Tim Sherwin, executive vice president of CardinalCommerce, added, “This is another step forward, for CardinalCommerce, for Alpha Bank and for the global credit and debit card industry. Alpha Bank has become the first issuing bank in Europe to go live with Verified by Visa and has chosen to implement our Issuer and Acquirer solutions. This system will considerably boost Alpha’s efforts to increase online transaction activity, consumer confidence, and reduce the cost of fraudulent purchases, while protecting its merchants with guaranteed payments.”
Visa, MasterCard and the EFT Networks are each developing their own initiatives to mandate online authentication worldwide. These initiatives are intended to reduce online fraud and increase consumer confidence in e-commerce. CardinalCommerce’s products support each of these initiatives from a single software platform, allowing customers to comply with their mandates in one simple and cost effective solution.
“We have proven once again that the combined industry knowledge, software technology and professional implementation methodology of this consortium has provided our customer with an exceptional solution for Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode,” says Stefan Jonsson, CEO of Worldwide Trust. “Alpha Credit Bank is the first in a series of banks that have chosen our technology. We will announce more customers soon.”
CardinalCommerce and Delta Singular plan to activate MasterCard SecureCode in the near future for Alpha Bank. CardinalCommerce’s unique software architecture allows seamless enablement of payment initiatives, such as SecureCode, without any additional implementation or integration costs for participating merchants.
About CardinalCommerce Corporation
CardinalCommerce Corporation is a leading provider of a technology-neutral authentication platform for securing electronic and wireless commerce, thus ensuring that individuals, businesses and government agencies can process electronic transactions and access confidential information safely, securely and privately. A significant application of Cardinal’s proprietary technology, the Cardinal Payment Authentication Platform, provides consumers, merchants, credit/debit card issuers, and processors the ability to conduct fully authenticated Internet-based e-commerce, while protecting the transactions from fraud. For more information, visit www.cardinalcommerce.com.
About Alpha Bank
Alpha Bank, founded in 1879, is the second largest Bank in Greece. With more than 500 Branches, Alpha Bank Group is also active in the international banking market, with presence in New York, London, Jersey in the Channel Islands, Cyprus, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, F.Y.R.O.M and Yugoslavia. Alpha Bank is the Official Bank of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.
About Safe3w
Safe3w, Inc. provides across-the-enterprise authentication for secure online access, payments and transactions. The company’s IDshieldT and FraudNet solutions require no hardware tokens or readers and are transparent to end-users. Safe3w is an international company with corporate headquarters in the U.S, an R&D facility in Israel, and operations in Spain, China, and Japan. Current customers include enterprises that focus on e-payments, financial services/banking, B2B, and gaming, and corporate enterprises and governments focused on secure remote access. For more information, go to Safe3w’s web site at http://www.safe3w.com or contact Constantine Malaxos at 516-222-1580.
About Delta Singular
Delta Singular, formed as a result of the merger between Singular S.A. and Delta Informatics, constitutes a leading group of companies in the Information Technology sector in Southeastern Europe. With experience built since 1984, Delta Singular responds dynamically to the business challenges of New Economy, servicing the market through Software Products (development and distribution of software products and services), Systems Integration Services (integrative software, hardware and services solutions) and IT Outsourcing Services. Delta Singular is the largest processor in Southeastern Europe. Processing services started in 1988 and the company is now servicing 34 banks in Greece, the Balkans and the Middle East, with over 100 card products, 40.000 POS terminals, 1.200 ATM and more than 80.000.000 transactions annually. For more information, please contact Delta Singular at bsmrktng@deltasingular.gr.
About WorldWide Trust
Based in Athens and New York, WorldWide Trust provides customers in Europe and the Middle East with products and services that authenticate and secure Internet transactions. In its region, WorldWide Trust has rapidly emerged since its inception in November 2001 as a leader in Internet security. WWTrust integrates its partners’ products and services to deliver a comprehensive suite of innovative, easy to install offerings, which are tailored to meet the unique requirements of each customer. Worldwide Trust’s product suite also supports the electronic signature decree of the EU. For more information, please visit www.wwtrust.com.
About nCipher
nCipher is redefining cryptographic security to protect points of risk across the enterprise-from network appliances to Web servers, to custom software applications and back-end databases. nCipher provides hardware and software solutions that enable organizations to implement best practice security by addressing the challenges of cryptographic key management and performance. Many of the world’s leading organizations – from Microsoft and Barclays Bank to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the U.S. Navy – rely on nCipher to deliver a sound e-security infrastructure. nCipher’s products are particularly well suited to organizations with high volumes of security-sensitive transactions, such as banking and financial institutions, government departments, e-retailers and online service providers.