Dusseldorf, February 2008. With the publishing of the 2007 business figures, Germany’s largest service provider for the card-based payment transactions, easycash, once again underlines its market leadership in Germany. The company was able to record clear growth rates in all areas of business. By taking over the business unit - Loyalty Solutions - from Experian Germany in September 2007, the easycash group was able to further develop its position in the customer cards sector.

The transaction volume grew by 10.3% compared to last year (803 million transactions) with a total of 886 million payment transactions processed. Of these, 43.9% (389 million transactions) alone were performed as electronic cash and Maestro transactions. Meanwhile, the payment transaction volume rose by 8.5% from 47 billion to 51 billion EUR, corresponding to 13% of the total retail turnover* in Germany. A slight increase was also observed in the number of terminals. The company operates a total of 173,000 POS terminals, and in the business unit of Payment Services, easycash was able to achieve an increase of 81% with factorings of 5.6 billion EUR. The number of return debit notes processed rose to 1.3 million. The HWD® (Händlerweisungsdatei, or blocked accounts list) continues to be the largest and most important lock file in Germany with 2.1 million active lock entries. The turnover for the financial year 2007 increased by 12.1% to a total of 75 million EUR, and in this same period, the number of employees rose from 200 to 340.

Prospects
“2008 will also be a growth-oriented financial year for the easycash group," says Siegfried Heimgärtner, Chairman of the Executive Board. “The per-capita transaction figures in Germany compared to the European sector are still below average and the same applies to the number of POS terminals. Cash continues to play an important role in Germany, but the trend towards cashless payment is unmistakable. The growth rates for card-based transactions were on average 6.1% between 2001 and 2007, and in the future we expect these to be up to 9.4%.** However, it’s not just the German market which has a high potential; through SEPA, new business opportunities are also possible at a European level. In 2008, easycash will develop new customers and markets with innovative offers. The European market is increasingly finding itself in a period of change; easycash will develop into a significant player in this market through organic growth and strategic purchases.”

* Source: Euromonitor (2007), RBR (2006), EHI, Deutsche Bundesbank, easycash
** Source: HDE retail turnover predictions 2007