BCE Emergis Wins Contract for Scotiabank's New E-commerce Security Service; Extends a growing business relationship with the Bank.

Business Editors

MONTREAL, Quebec--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 2000

BCE Emergis (TSE, ME: IFM.) today announced an exclusive five-year contract with Scotiabank's new subsidiary e-Scotia.com to support the distribution of leading edge technology to secure business on the Internet for Canadian and international businesses.

BCE Emergis will provide state of the art, highly secure facilities, as well as the operational platform, management and support services required for e-Scotia.com to process digital certificates. This agreement covers the Canadian, U.S. and Mexican markets.

e-Scotia.com distributes the most advanced Internet security available in the marketplace today - digital certificates - electronic passports used to uniquely identify people and resources over the Web. These certificates allow companies to secure their e-commerce transactions and electronic communications on the Internet.

This new contract expands on other e-commerce processing services provided by BCE Emergis for Scotiabank. It currently provides the Bank with the processing support for credit card point of sale transactions both on the Web and in stores.

&uot;Building on our relationship with BCE Emergis made more business sense than developing and managing the infrastructure ourselves,&uot; said Albert Wahbe, President of e-Scotia.com and Scotiabank's Executive Vice-President of Electronic Banking. &uot;With processing support from BCE Emergis, e-Scotia.com plays a leadership role in helping Canadian companies to get launched on the web by securing and enabling their e-commerce transactions. We look forward to working with BCE Emergis on new e-commerce opportunities.&uot;

&uot;We are very pleased to have entered into this latest project with Scotiabank. It reaffirms our position as a leading provider of electronic services to the financial community, and marks the continuation of what we expect to be a growing relationship with the Bank&uot;, said Brian Edwards, President and CEO, BCE Emergis.

Edwards continued: &uot;To manage the expected volume of Digital Certificates, we have jointly developed a unique and highly available infrastructure for the use of e-Scotia.com. This infrastructure involves the security environment of both the physical facility and the network platform. We have created one of the most secure and robust Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) environments in the world, with a capacity large enough to accommodate the growing market for e-Scotia.com services.&uot;

Scotiabank manages over one hundred and fifty thousand Digital Certificates for its own customers, enabling more than half a million banking and investment transactions to take place securely online each month. e-Scotia.com will secure e-commerce for Canadian companies subsequently helping them realize the incredible opportunities from doing business on the web. The goal is to facilitate the growth of e-commerce by encouraging more people to shop and trade online without security concerns.

Scotiabank is one of North America's premier financial institutions, with more than $222 billion in assets and approximately 41,000 employees worldwide. It is also Canada's most international bank, with more than 1,600 branches and offices in over 50 countries on six continents. Scotiabank is on the World Wide Web at www.scotiabank.ca and e-Scotia.com is at www.e-Scotia.com

BCE Emergis delivers network-centric Internet commerce services that improve customer processes through the exchange of secure transactions. Combining e-commerce services, network connectivity, security and e-payments solutions through industry verticals, BCE Emergis offers a full suite of core technologies that are the essential building blocks for electronic commerce. BCE Emergis is among the top electronic-commerce providers in North America and is listed on the TSE 300 Composite Index. For more information, please refer to www.emergis.com.

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of BCE Emergis with respect to its performance, business and future events. Such statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results and events may vary significantly.