MasterCard Acquires Orbiscom to Accelerate Development of Payment Solutions

MasterCard Incorporated (NYSE: MA) announced today the acquisition of Orbiscom Ltd., a Dublin, Ireland-based leading payments solutions software provider for major financial institutions. The purchase price is approximately $100 million, a portion of which is contingent upon the future performance of Orbiscom’s business.
 
The acquisition builds on the companies’ existing partnership that created MasterCard inControl, an innovative platform featuring an array of advanced authorization, transaction routing and alert controls designed to assist financial institutions in creating new and enhanced payment offerings. In 2008, Royal Bank of Scotland became the first financial institution to implement MasterCard inControl for its commercial card customers.
 
"We are pleased to solidify our relationship with Orbiscom," said Robert W. Selander, MasterCard president and chief executive officer. "By adding Orbiscom’s expertise, intellectual property and talented team of innovative payments-industry professionals to MasterCard, we will further accelerate the development of new payment solutions for our customers. As part of this agreement, Orbiscom’s existing customers, which include leading financial institutions, will receive continued support for current Orbiscom products and the opportunity for new capabilities to help them develop new payment solutions."
 
"At Orbiscom, we have valued our partnership with MasterCard and are pleased to build on the relationship," said Garry Lyons, chief executive officer, Orbiscom. "Joining MasterCard, a proven, global payments leader, enables Orbiscom’s innovations to come to life on a bigger scale."
 
The acquisition paves the way for more innovation and deployment of turn-key payment platforms such as MasterCard inControl, which has seen significant interest from financial institutions since its introduction.
 
With MasterCard inControl, issuers can quickly and efficiently introduce card programs tailored to the specific needs of their consumer and corporate cardholders and leverage advanced features, including:

• Enhanced authorization controls that direct how, when and where payment cards may be used.
• Intelligent routing capabilities that enable a transaction to be routed to different funding sources depending on the transaction characteristics.
• Robust alert functionality providing personalized real-time communication on transaction activities.
• A limited-use number feature that allows authorization, spending limits and usability controls to be set on a transaction basis, providing enhanced levels of security, control, data capture and traceability on every purchase.