IVI Checkmate and Royal Bank Introduce Canada's First Hand-Held Portable Wireless Terminal for Debit and Credit Transactions.

ATLANTA/TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 1998--

The Elite 780 makes popular debit transactions accessible to all

users in all markets

IVI Checkmate Corp. (Nasdaq:CMIV); (TSE:IVC/IVI) today announced that its Elite 780 has received certification from the Royal Bank of Canada ("Royal Bank"), and becomes the first fully portable long range wireless terminal available in Canada for both debit and credit applications.

The Elite 780 is one of several wireless terminals offered by IVI Checkmate, and is the first certified by the Royal Bank to accept debit transactions at the point-of-sale. With a built-in modem and thermal printer, the Elite 780 is a complete portable POS solution that is compact, lightweight and ideally suited to portable applications where the terminal is brought to the customer.

The Elite 780 will be targeted by the Royal Bank to mobile and service/hospitality businesses such as home repair businesses, delivery services, portable sales kiosks, taxi cabs and limousines, restaurants and petroleum full-service stations.

"This wireless terminal gives merchants the first portable payment solution that offers consumers the ability to choose between debit or credit whatever best suits their needs," says Frank Moore, Vice-President, Merchant and Point of Sale Services, Royal Bank. "With the phenomenal growth of debit in this country, unmatched anywhere else in the world, it is important to combine both debit and credit functions into one portable payment terminal."

With this new terminal, clients of Grocery Gateway will be able to do their shopping online at www.grocerygateway.com and then pay for their purchases with debit or credit when they are delivered to their door. "The Elite 780 terminal with debit capability means our clients can choose between paying with their debit card, the most commonly used form of payment for groceries in Canada, or credit," says Bill DiNardo, president of Grocery Gateway, a Toronto-based internet grocery shopping company that offers home delivery to the Greater Toronto area. "This is a great step forward for e-commerce in Canada."

The Elite 780 with debit card functionality has a distinct competitive advantage over other wireless terminals currently available in that IVI Checkmate's mobile payment terminals have been designed to transmit transactions on Cantel AT&T's Mobitex network. The Mobitex network is a wireless system that is dedicated to processing data instead of voice, which is the most common wireless signal. As a result, the payment transaction signal carried via Mobitex does not have to compete with voice signals, resulting in greater reliability.

Rogers Cantel has approximately 1.8 million wireless subscribers in Canada. Rogers Cantel Mobile Communications Inc. (TSE:RCM.B); (NYSE:RCN), an 81% owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications Inc., owns and operates Canada's largest wireless company. Rogers Cantel offers a full range of wireless communication services including voice, data and paging under the co-brand Cantel(R) AT&T(TM).

Royal Bank (ticker symbol: RY) is Canada's premier global financial services group and a leading provider of personal and business banking, corporate and investment banking, and wealth management services. As one of North America's largest financial institutions, Royal Bank and its key subsidiaries Royal Trust, RBC Dominion Securities, RBC Insurance, and Royal Bank Action Direct have 60,000 employees who serve 10 million clients through more than 1,500 branches and offices in 36 countries.

International Verifact Inc. of Toronto, Canada, and Checkmate Electronics, Inc. of Roswell, Ga., united to form IVI Checkmate Corp., the third largest electronic payment solutions provider in North America. IVI Checkmate is a full-service solutions provider in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. Our innovative automation payment solutions are expert in handling electronic payment transactions and electronic benefits transfer, serving the retail, financial, hospitality, banking, healthcare and transportation industries. With offices in the U.S. and Canada and established strategic alliances and partnerships worldwide, IVI Checkmate is well positioned to deliver leading products and global technologies to our customers.

This press release contains forward-looking statements subject to the safe harbor created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Management cautions that these statements represent projections and estimates of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors including, without limitation, the company's dependence on its limited suppliers and manufacturers of component parts of its products; rapid and significant technological developments that could delay the introduction of improvements in existing products or of new products; the company's dependence on its proprietary technologies (which may be independently developed by competitors); the company's dependence on a small number of large retail customers; the potential fluctuation in financial results as a result of the company's inability to make sales to large customers as well as the volume and timing of bookings received during a quarter and variations in sales mix; competition from existing companies as well as new market entrants; and, the company's dependence on key personnel.