March 14, 2006

Top Stories in This Issue:

	Inter-American Development Bank Buys Trema’s Cash Management Tools
	Puerto Rican Municipalities Tap Hansen Technology for Tax Billing, Collections
	Mizrahi Tefahot Bank of Israel to Deploy Misys Risk Management Tools
	Romanian Credit Card Firm Turns to First Data for MasterCard Processing
	Citibank, Card Tech Partner on Prepaid Scholarship Card in Poland
	Belgian Finance Ministry Hires Siemens for Fraud Detection
	Cisco Helps LippoBank of Indonesia Upgrade its Storage Area Network
	Indonesian Bank Purchases DDA EMV Cards From Gemplus International

Inter-American Development Bank Buys Trema’s Cash Management Tools

The Inter-American Development Bank will use technology from Trema to manage cash and treasury operations. The bank is a primary source of multilateral lending in Latin America and the Caribbean, and promotes private sector growth, labor force training, and small enterprise modernization. The bank will deploy TremaSuite, according to Trema company officials. The deployment will improve the bank’s cash management functions, including forecasting in real-time, reconciling transactions and coordinating trading and SWIFT operations.

Puerto Rican Municipalities Tap Hansen Technology for Tax Billing, Collections

Officials in all 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico will use software and professional services from Hansen Information Technologies to improve their billing and tax management operations. Hansen partner Rock Solid Technologies, located in Puerto Rico, will assist Hansen as the two firms replace the municipalities’ legacy system for managing tax bills and collections with technology from Hansen. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Municipal Collection Center, that selected Hansen, issues taxes for some 1.2 million properties on the island and collects more than $800 million annually in revenues. Hansen provides enterprise resource planning technology to government entities, including more than a dozen city and county governments in the United States.

Mizrahi Tefahot Bank of Israel to Deploy Misys Risk Management Tools

The bank will replace its legacy risk and interest rate position management system with Summit FT from Misys Banking Systems. The new technology deployment reflects the bank’s intention to expand and improve its capacity to participate in the Israeli interest rate derivatives and bond markets. The technology from Misys includes straight-through processing and a real-time connection to the Bloomberg trading system. Misys Summit FT will also enable the bank to expand its mix of investments to include inflation products and better monitor exposure to currency and interest rate fluctuations.

Romanian Credit Card Firm Turns to First Data for MasterCard Processing

Credisson International will use a range of services from First Data to handle MasterCard processing, card personalization and authorization. Credisson authorizes credit card transactions at more than 460 POS locations in Romania and occupies a 20 percent share of the county’s credit card transaction market. Credisson will outsource call center services, management of POS terminal transactions, and dispute resolution to First Data, as well. Officials at First Data lauded the agreement as a big win for First Data’s efforts to gain market share in Central Europe. Cetelem Group, the consumer credit division of BNP Paribas, bought Credisson International in 2005.

Citibank, Card Tech Partner on Prepaid Scholarship Card in Poland

A first in Poland, the Debit Scholarship prepaid card will allow holders of scholarships issued by the Higher School of Public Administration in Bialystok to access their scholarship funds at ATMs and pay for purchases at POS terminals that accept Visa Electron cards. Citibank’s Polish division, Citibank Handlowy, is sponsoring the prepaid card. Card Tech Limited is providing the technology. The prepaid card is made possible by Citibank Handlowy’s deployment of Card Technology’s PRIME card management platform in 2003. The bank implemented the technology to enable it to issue debit cards to corporate customers in Poland.

Belgian Finance Ministry Hires Siemens for Fraud Detection

The Federal Public Service for the Ministry of Finance in Belgium has chosen Siemens Business Services Belgium office to coordinate the implementation a system to enable civil servants to improve fraud detection and risk analysis in tax collections. Siemens will coordinate the work of several IT providers in the creation of a centralized database and data analysis program. NRB, IKAN, Bull, Cronos, IBM, SPSS and Microsoft are participating in the risk and fraud detection legacy system upgrade. Siemens’ Belgium office has provided IT consulting and services to the ministry of finance for more than 20 years, Siemens officials said.

Cisco Helps LippoBank of Indonesia Upgrade its Storage Area Network

Cisco Systems was picked by PT. Bank Lippo of Indonesia to install a Fibre Channel-based storage area network that improves the bank’s database and disaster recovery capabilities. The contract included integrating data storage with the bank’s overall network using Internet protocols to facilitate data access. Cisco replaced several of the bank’s legacy storage systems and customer account servers. Bank officials said the bank’s ability to recover data in the event of a disaster has been greatly enhanced by maintenance of two physically separate databases linked by the Cisco storage area network.

Indonesian Bank Purchases DDA EMV Cards From Gemplus International

Bank Buana of Indonesia, a commercial bank, plans to switch all of the credit cards it issues to corporate customers to Dynamic Data Authentication (DDA) EMV cards from Gemplus International by the end of 2006. EMV cards with DDA technology have a cryptographic processor built into the card that creates a signature for each POS transaction. Security is also enhanced because the cards are harder to duplicate, bank officials said. The switch to new DDA EMV cards will also enable the bank to couple loyalty programs to card use.