STRATEGIC PARTNERS
March 5, 2002
LOS ANGELES -- Cash Technologies, Inc. announced strategic agreements with Concord EFS, Inc. and CheckFree Holdings Company that will strengthen final development of Cash Tech's new EMMA (E-commerce Message Management Architecture) transaction processing system.
The EMMA system is designed to seamlessly interface financial networks -- particularly the four main channels through which trillions of dollars are transacted each year: the ATM network; the credit card (POS) network; the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network; and cash.
EMMA will facilitate communication between these networks so that financial transactions can be made over multiple networks. As a result, e-commerce transactions such as electronic bill payment, real-time activated prepaid phone cards and check cashing can be processed in a single transaction, even from an ATM.
Concord, a leading acquirer of electronic transactions, will provide ATM and POS gateway processing services for EMMA. Cash Tech is expected to be the first Concord gateway customer to use the company's new TCP/IP (Internet Protocol) interface to process ATM and POS transactions.
CheckFree, the nation's largest provider of electronic bill payments and collections, will provide electronic bill payment processing for the new EMMA system. The Cash Tech system will provide the first implementation of CheckFree's bill payment platform on an ATM.
"In our effort to make Cash Tech's EMMA transaction processing system the broad solution for a new breed of ATM and Internet transactions, we consider it essential to partner with the dominant participants in each e-commerce category," explained Bruce Korman, chairman and CEO of Cash Technologies.
EMMA will also offer Internet commerce providers the ability -- for the first time -- to accept ATM cards as a form of online payment and to secure online credit card transactions.
