Dusseldorf, February 2008. easycash, the cashless payment solutions provider, is taking a further step in pursuit of its pan-European growth strategy: following the opening up of the market in Austria, Germany's leading services company in payment transactions for merchants* is now once again actively offering its range of products and services for terminal and network operation on the Austrian market. The move became possible as a result of the continued liberalization of the domestic acquiring market.

Following the decision of the Cartel Supreme Court: the way is clear for more competition
Retailers in Austria can now benefit from the entire product and services portfolio of a leading European provider of cashless payment transaction solutions. The opening up of the market is backed by a legally binding decision taken in 2007 by the country's Supreme Court, in which a supplier was ruled to have clearly committed competitive violations and subsequently heavily fined.

Stronger expansion of the market presence in Austria from 2008
Thanks to close cooperation with selected distribution partners, easycash already offers its entire products and services portfolio in the network and terminal operation sector in Austria. Further trading companies have already decided in favour of solutions offered by easycash GmbH. Marcus W. Mosen, Managing Director of easycash Holding comments "We are pleased to be able to once again actively offer our products and services on the Austrian market. Austria is an important European market for our customers, which also plays a significant role as a base for the growing markets in central and eastern Europe."

Whilst easycash presently only offers its services via sales partners, the company has announced that, in 2008, it will be present on the market with its own sales branch. "In the coming year we intend to position ourselves as a full service provider in Austria and offer customer solutions from a single source. These will include our network and terminal services as well as Card and Loyalty solutions," states Mosen.

* According to the EHI Retail Institute (Cologne), 40% of all electronic cash payments in 2006 were transacted via easycash.