Martin Macmillan, chief executive of Level Four, believes it's time to take his company and its flagship product, a software suite for developing ATM applications and performing end-to-end testing of networks, to the, ahem, next level.

The UK-based company has signed such prominent European clients as Abbey National, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB since Macmillan founded it in 1995. Level Four has gathered five Middle Eastern clients in as many months after entering that region earlier this year.

So it's on to the Americas for Level Four.

The company's UK principals have teamed with industry veteran Jorge Fernandez, the president and chief executive of Capture Systems International, a Miami-based transaction processor, to form a joint venture called Level Four Americas.
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The new venture, also based in Miami, will serve North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Both Macmillan and Fernandez believe there is a burgeoning need for Level Four's products, particularly in Latin America, where the region is facing an imminent upgrade to the EMV standard.

Brazil, which Fernandez said is "always at the forefront of technology in Latin America," is leading the EMV conversion effort. Even better for Level Four, because of a lack of shared networks, its banks have very large ATM networks.

"You want to find out if you have any issues before you roll out something new like EMV across thousands of machines," Fernandez said.

In addition to EMV, some Latin American countries, including Mexico, have not yet moved to Triple DES, Fernandez said.

Level Four has products specifically developed to ease implementation of both of those upgrades, EMV FastTrack and 3DES FastTrack.

Additional products include ATM Developer, for designing, configuring and testing new ATM content from a desktop PC; ATM Host Simulator, for emulating a host payment switch from the desktop and ATM Simulator for viewing and testing ATM downloads from a desktop.

Fernandez said he was impressed with Level Four's products after visiting its UK offices and interviewing a number of its clients. Even before that, however, he was taken with the company's management team.

He has known its chairman, Nigel Walsh, for nearly 10 years. Walsh formerly led a company called Software Partnership, which created an early ecommerce product that was purchased by one of Fernandez's former employers, eFunds.

"I knew (Walsh) wouldn't get involved unless he saw real opportunity," Fernandez explained.

Martin Macmillan

Level Four has been eyeing the Americas for at least a year, Macmillan said. However, "we didn't want to get in too early."

The timing is now right to enter the Americas, Macmillan said, with more deployers moving to Microsoft Windows-based operating platforms for their ATMs and showing increased interest in new applications like check imaging.

"Some of the technologies the market has been moving toward for years are finally becoming reality," Macmillan said.

While competitors like Lexcel and Paragon Application Systems are well established in the United States, Macmillan said, "They've been focusing on legacy environments. We have more experience with Windows and XFS platforms."

In addition, he believes competing products may not fully address the needs of large U.S. financial institutions driving their own ATMs with proprietary systems.

"They have more sophisticated requirements. They don't really want a shrink-wrapped, out-of-the-box solution," he said, noting that Level Four has customized its products for several of its existing European and Middle Eastern customers.

The Americas are the next step in what has been to date an aggressive growth curve. According to Macmillan, Level Four tripled its revenues from 2002 to 2003 and doubled them from 2003 to 2004.