Freeserve puts trust in Retail Logic

- Managed Services operation handling millions of payment transactions every month

Fleet, Hampshire, August 26th. Freeserve, The UK's number one Internet Service Provider (ISP), has outsourced its customer billing authorisation processes for their flagship AnyTime service to Retail Logic's Managed Services operation using the company’s Solve/SE authorisation and transaction processing software. Before the switch, Freeserve employees were responsible for interfacing directly with multiple banks for authorisations and payments. Now the company is saving time and effort by sending a single encrypted batch file to Retail Logic each day using a simple FTP connection over the Internet.

Managing Director of Operations at Freeserve, Tim Phillips, says: "We chose Retail Logic because its software had a track record of easily handling the large number of credit and debit card transactions that our company deals with. Outsourcing has streamlined our operations allowing us to focus on our core business thereby easily repaying our investment. Our rigorous Service Level Agreement incorporates the performance Retail Logic has to achieve and we are confident we can rely on them“

“We're already looking at future projects such as handling realtime payments along with Verified by Visa and MasterCard’s SecureCode. Retail Logic has already more than proved its capability by handling anything we can throw at them."

Tim Stratton, Retail Logic Managing Director, adds: "Freeserve is the largest ISP in the UK with a huge volume of billing data to be dealt with on a daily basis. Last month we handled a total of 2.8 million transactions – a clear demonstration of our ability to deal rapidly with huge volumes."

Transactions are processed through Retail Logic's Solve/SE authorisation engines running on Linux servers and then sent to Barclaycard Merchant Services, the acquirer used by Freeserve. Comprehensive Management Information reports are produced according to Freeserve’s precise business needs and the whole operation is completed in less than two hours of receiving the raw data.

Retail Logic manages the entire operation and the performance of the whole system is closely monitored using Retail Logic’s own Solve Monitor software. The entire infrastructure is duplicated in a second data centre enabling automatic recovery in the event of any system failure.

Each month, Retail Logic's Managed Services processes more than seven million customer transactions – considerably more than the total of all Visa and MasterCard transactions in Russia for the same period.

About Retail Logic
For 15 years, Retail Logic has been a leading provider of payment processing software for any form of payment card and across multiple platforms, including the Internet. In 2002, the EMV-accredited Smart-Solution was named ‘Most Innovative Product of the Year’ at the Advanced Card Awards in London and ‘Best Software’ at the Cartes Awards in Paris.

Retail Logic is playing a key role as Britain prepares to adopt EMV Chip & PIN. In the UK, users include over 50% of leading retail stores and four of the top five supermarkets. The company also has major initiatives underway across Europe, the United States, ASPAC and Africa.Notes to Editors.

About Retail Logic's Managed Services operation
Retail Logic’s Managed Services operation provides a complete EFT card authorisation, settlement and fraud management service to a wide range of companies. Services are either managed – using dedicated hardware – or hosted, with a number of clients sharing the same hardware. There are currently nine customers on its books, with six of them already live.

Hot standby functionality is employed to enable automated fail-over to the backup site in the event of a failure in any part of the system. Retail Logic is building on its reputation for delivering quality products and services. Managed Services operation has concentrated on building a flexible support infrastructure to ensure that it can host systems to meet the diverse and unique requirements of its customers.

Transactions are processed on servers based at two of the company's data centres in Southern England with X25 network links servicing all major UK acquirers. One of the key strengths of Retail Logic's core Solve product suite is its ability to run on any operating system and hardware platform, and its modular design enables new functionality, such as Card Not Present identification and authorisation, to be added as a company's needs evolve.

About Freeserve:
Owned by French company Wanadoo, Freeserve is the UK's leading ISP with 2.666 million active subscribers at the end of March 2003, compared with 2.478 million at end March 2002. At March 31, 2003, Freeserve had 1.028 million unlimited narrowband subscribers, up from 744,000 at end March 2002, representing year-to-year growth of 38 percent.