Community West Bancshares' E-Commerce Subsidiary Enters Agreement to Provide System to Network Marketing Industry.

GOLETA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 1999--

Lew Stone, president and chief executive officer of Community West Bancshares, announced that the company's electronic subsidiary, Electronic Paycheck LLC, has entered into an agreement with Fionda FS LLC.

Under the agreement, Fionda will market the use of the Electronic Paycheck card to clients of Fionda within the network marketing industry. Fionda's clients currently have more than 1 million distributors, and the Electronic Paycheck card may be used to pay commissions and related payments to the distributors in lieu of issuing paper checks.

Stone said: "We are extremely pleased to be working with Fionda. They offer Electronic Paycheck access to some of the largest network marketing companies in the industry, which may significantly increase the number of our cards outstanding.

"We have been searching for some time to find just such a partner. Because Electronic Paycheck's revenues are based upon the number of cards outstanding, and card usage, this potential for us is extremely valuable."

Ron Way, Fionda's managing director, said: "Some of our clients pay their members one, two, four or more times a month. With the custom-designed service we prepared in conjunction with Electronic Paycheck, we are able to cut our clients' check-writing costs tremendously, as well as provide them with a continual stream of residual income never before attainable, as their members use the ATM channel for cash and purchases.

"We signed up three of our clients without blinking an eye, and expect to sign up a large percentage of the rest of them within the next few weeks. We think that this is going to be the hottest new product to hit the marketplace in a long time."

Community West Bancshares is a technology and financial services company with headquarters in Goleta. Goleta National Bank, subsidiary of the company, has two full-service branches, one in Goleta and one in Ventura, and loan production offices located in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia and Nevada.

In addition, Goleta National Bank is majority owner of Electronic Paycheck. Palomar Savings & Loan Association, subsidiary of the company, has two full-service branches and a loan production office, all located in Escondido, Calif.

Fionda FS is a wholly owned subsidiary of the privately owned Fionda Group with its U.S. headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif., and its international headquarters in London.

Fionda specializes in providing telecommunications services to the network marketing industry and counts among it clients some of the largest in the world, including Herbalife International, Mannatech Inc., Wellness International Network Ltd., Royal Body Care and some 20 other organizations.

Its primary product is providing long-distance services to individual members of this powerful industry, not only in the United States but also in more than 200 other countries around the world. Its uniqueness lies in its size and power to negotiate cutting-edge contracts with some of the largest carriers in the world.

It also has the ability to track hundreds of thousands of individual members, and their customers, and to pay commissions to them all through their parent organizations seamlessly around the world.

Now Fionda has just added debit card services as a natural adjunct to its line of telecom products to facilitate these organizations' ability to pay their members anywhere the ATM symbol is accepted.

This release contains forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views of future events and operations. These forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to the company as of the date of this release. It is important to note that these forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the ability of the company to implement its technology strategy, and issue a larger volume of cards. The company's actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including general economic conditions and "Competition" as described in the company's Form 10-K for the year ended Dec. 31, 1998.