TSYS Pushes Innovation in Payment Strategies; Beyond Risk Scores and Pricing, Finding New Ways to Win Revenues in a Fierce Market.

COLUMBUS, Ga. -- With the recent wave of consolidation among card-issuing banks, executives and decision makers in the payments industry may feel like they're shuffling the same old deck of cards in the fight for market share -- while the same customers merely get passed from hand to hand.

"We must assess our thinking, set smart priorities and think for the future, building strategies that work for our clients and ourselves for the long-haul," says Connie C. Dudley, executive vice president of product and client development at TSYS.

"We are accustomed to creating new tools to implement products and client requests, but we should turn that innovative spirit inward and find new ways to approach our businesses," Dudley says. "It's time to replace talk of risk scores and pricing with bigger-picture discussion about preferences, convenience and value."

Dudley will discuss practical approaches for financial institutions to implement new portfolio-management strategies on May 22 during the three-day 18th Annual Card Forum & Expo in Hollywood, Fla. During this Industry Innovation Session scheduled for 12:15 p.m., Dudley will guide participants through an exercise that will reveal how a simple shift in perspective can generate profitable results.

Dudley leads all product and client development at TSYS, including the corporate project office, consulting services, conversions and knowledge management. In her 30-year career, she has served as director of conversions and training, documentation manager, and group executive for implementations, among other roles.

Experts from TSYS will be leading other Card Forum sessions as well: Clifford B. Mason, group executive for prepaid services at TSYS, will join a panel discussion on "Mastering Operational Challenges" in the prepaid market on May 22. Joelyn Cail, senior director of fraud-support services at TSYS, will join a panel discussion on "Keeping Thieves at Bay: The Search for Better Security" on May 23. Read more about Card Forum at sourcemediaconferences.com/conferences/CFE06/index.html.

About TSYS

TSYS (www.tsys.com) is one of the world's largest companies for outsourced payment services, offering a broad range of issuer and acquirer processing technologies that support consumer finance, credit, debit and prepaid services for financial institutions and retail companies in North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific. Based in Columbus, Ga., TSYS (NYSE: TSS) is 80-percent held by Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE: SNV), one of FORTUNE magazine's "Most Admired Companies" and a member of its "100 Best Companies to Work For" Hall of Fame. For more information, contact [e-mail].