Paymentech Takes a Serious Swipe At Fraud With OnGuard Suite of Merchant Protection Products; OnGuard Fraud Management Solutions Draw First Line of Defense.

Business Editors

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 16, 2002

Paymentech, the nation's premier payment solutions expert, introduces a reliable defense against transaction fraud with OnGuard, a new suite of fraud protection products and solutions.

As purchases of goods and services by mail, telephone and Internet increase, so does a merchant's exposure to fraud. According to recent studies, Internet transaction fraud is 12 times higher than in-store fraud. In 2001, merchants lost $700 million in revenue due to fraudulent transactions.

The Paymentech OnGuard suite offers a comprehensive set of fraud management tools to help merchants with virtually any fraud-related problem. From relatively simple address verification services to sophisticated fraud scoring solutions to specialty services, OnGuard offers a full range of endorsed proprietary and third-party products to better manage fraud exposure and alleviate customer concerns.

"Merchants are painfully aware of the impact fraud can have on their bottom line," said John Shirey, Paymentech Group Manager. "We process more card-not-present transactions than anyone else in the industry and we have made it our business to become fraud management experts. In creating OnGuard, we recognized merchants face a broad range of fraud problems, and now we offer a broad range of fraud solutions."

OnGuard encompasses Paymentech's proprietary fraud products as well as premier fraud prevention products, including address verification, card security validation, credit card authentication, transaction scoring, identity authentication and age verification services, in conjunction with our OnGuard partners:

-- Experian(R), provides real-time identity authentication to prevent identity theft and safeguard merchants from fraud. They combine intelligent decision-making software and statistical tools with some of the world's most comprehensive databases of consumer and business information.

-- iShopSecure, Inc., provides real-time identity authentication that eliminates credit card fraud and identity theft. Their patent-pending products utilize the most robust databases available and insure authenticated transactions up to $5,000.

-- Fair, Isaac and Co., Inc (formerly HNC Software Inc.), provides real-time fraud scoring to card-not-present merchants. Neural-network models and patented profiling technology work together to discern the probability that a transaction is fraudulent.

-- Arcot Systems Inc., the leading solution provider of secure e-commerce payment authentication for Verified by Visa and the MasterCard Guaranteed Payment program. Arcot provides secure, reliable and highly scalable enterprise and class solutions for both individual merchants and merchant aggregators.

-- ClearCommerce, the leading provider of e-commerce risk management and payment processing software, serving more than 45,000 businesses worldwide. They offer software that easily plugs into a merchant's checkout process and manages cardholder authentication for Verified by Visa and MasterCard's Guaranteed Payment program.

-- Retail Decisions (ReD), provides a fully managed risk management and fraud detection service that combines neural-network technology, access to proprietary databases, rules based processing, expert human insight and a web-based transaction review tool to provide a best-of breed risk management approach.

-- VerifyMe(TM), provides a patent-pending fraud prevention service using government-issued ID database checks, algorithms and an optional web-based signature capture to instantaneously verify identity and age for citizens in 112 nations.

Dallas-based Paymentech delivers secure and reliable payment service in merchant acquiring and point-of-sale transaction processing with a wide array of product functionality and support. Paymentech (www.paymentech.com) processed approximately 3.7 billion total transactions and $114 billion in bankcard sales volume in 2001. Founded in 1985, Paymentech is the nation's premier processor and acquirer of credit card transactions.