PaymentNet™ Launches First Web-Based
Level II Purchase Card Service

Visa USA backs new SoftTerminal™ service as preferred
solution for merchants selling to corporate customers

Pleasanton, CA — March 9, 1999 — PaymentNet™ (www.paymentnet.com)today announced immediate availability of SoftTerminal™ (www.softterminal.com) -- the first Internet-based solution for real-time processing of Level II corporate purchase cards. SoftTerminal is an extension of PaymentNet’s state-of-the-art, secure, transaction processing service.

The SoftTerminal service will be resold initially by First Data Corporation’s (NYSE: FDC) merchant services unit, First Data Merchant Services Corporation (FDMS), and represents an excellent opportunity for financial institutions to offer a co-branded solution that will lower costs for their large purchase card users.

SoftTerminal has also been endorsed by Visa USA’s Commercial Commerce Division as a preferred solution for merchants serving larger corporate customers. According to Ryan Ross, Visa vice president, business e-commerce, "SoftTerminal is the right way to enable suppliers that may not accept corporate purchase cards today. It is fast, efficient, and leverages the Internet and the Web. We believe this service provides a great opportunity for large purchasing card organizations to support their merchants with a new cost-effective purchase card solution."

SoftTerminal is expected to displace cumbersome, costly physical terminals, thereby substantially lowering the barriers that have hampered the development of what is estimated by industry watchers to be an untapped $400 billion market for corporate purchase card fees.

According to Nick Peirson, vice president at FDMS, "SoftTerminal is an excellent way for merchants to accept corporate purchase cards. Small merchants will be attracted by the ability to pass level two data while realizing substantial cost-savings, and larger merchants will be attracted by the extreme versatility and feature-richness of the service when compared to physical terminal solutions."

One early SoftTerminal user is Pirelli Tire of North America. Chris Pantani of Pirelli said, "The versatility and economy of SoftTerminal are its main advantages. We conduct a lot of business at the race track, where using physical terminals is highly impractical. With SoftTerminal, each and every Pirelli agent simply launches a browser from their laptop, invokes SoftTerminal, and sells. One SoftTerminal license works for all our agents. That’s a huge savings and a major efficiency boost for our organization."

Industry research indicates that it costs businesses $50 - $150 to process a traditional purchase order. Using a purchasing card can reduce that expense as much as 90%. Until now, however, it has not been cost-effective for the large base of smaller wholesalers to accommodate their purchase card customers and realize those savings.

Soft Terminal Description and Advantages

PaymentNet’s SoftTerminal is a web-based Corporate Purchase Card (Level 2) payment processing solution that can be deployed at a fraction of the cost of physical purchase card terminals, and with substantially increased flexibility and feature richness.

Because SoftTerminal is Web-based, it can be replicated by merchants at multiple physical locations for no additional cost – an impossibility with physical devices. Also, software upgrades are handled on the Soft Terminal server, rather than deployed via costly physical media and "field upgraded" either by the user or by a field representative. This saves considerable time and money when new functions are added, and eliminates the headaches associated with maintaining compliance as Visa, Master Card and others change processing formats once or twice per year.

SoftTerminal uses the Internet and the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol to create a secure information transmission medium. Merchants simply log into a secure, intuitive Soft Terminal web site where they can input transactions for real time processing.

Using PaymentNet’s processing service and secure transaction storage servers, Soft Terminal gives merchants features not available with traditional physical POS terminal solutions, while removing the potential for hardware and software failures, and eliminating maintenance and replacement costs.

SoftTerminal also offers the ability for merchants to search for individual transactions and generate transaction reports dynamically based on user-definable criteria. These capabilities are far beyond those of today’s physical POS solutions for business-to-business transactions conducted with purchase cards.

Soft Terminal Pricing

For SoftTerminal pricing and ordering, call First Data Merchant Services toll-free at (877) 298-2431.

About Visa

As the World’s Best Way to Pay, Visa is the leading payment brand and the largest consumer payment system worldwide with more volume than all other major payment cards combined. Visa plays a pivotal role in advancing new payment products and technologies to benefit its 21,000 member financial institutions and their cardholders. Visa has more than 70 smart card programs in 33 countries and on the Internet, with 23 million Visa chip cards, including over 8 million Visa Cash cards. Visa is pioneering SET Secure Electronic Transaction^TM programs to enable and advance Internet commerce. There are more than 620 million Visa-branded cards, which generate over US$1.2 trillion in annual volume. Visa is accepted at more than 15 million worldwide locations, including at over 450,000 ATMs in the Visa Global ATM Network.

About FDMS

First Data Merchant Services Corporation is one of the nation's leading providers of electronic commerce solutions for hundreds of financial institutions and nearly two million merchant locations. FDMS offers a full range of processing solutions including credit, debit, check and pre-paid payments, along with value-added information and Internet-based services. For further information, visit http://www.firstdata.com.

About the PaymentNet Service

PaymentNet provides secure, Internet-based transaction and payment processing on an out-source basis for businesses who sell goods and services via the Web and call-centers.

PaymentNet offers industry-leading automation and customer care with its high-reliability credit card, debit card, and electronic check processing services.

The PaymentNet Service is the leading single-source, multi-payment Internet gateway. It has been deployed across a wide range of large and small merchants with excellent results, and has proved its value to key payment processing, banking, ISP/distribution and technology partners. The PaymentNet system is deployed using a free, easily integrated thin client binary file.

The service is based on an agent/host architecture, and leverages the Internet as a virtual private network between its proprietary payment processing server and individual clients dispersed on Internet and Intranet locations.

The PaymentNet Service is a powerful alternative for merchants who have been disappointed by slow, cumbersome, inefficient and costly Internet-based payment processing solutions that have their origins in the "pioneering" era of Internet payment technologies.

About PaymentNet

PaymentNet, Inc. is an out-source provider of automated, highly secure, Internet-based, real-time transaction processing services for merchants of all sizes and business approaches. PaymentNet is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, and can be found on the Web at www.paymentnet.com. Contact PaymentNet corporate offices at 925/225-1670

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PaymentNet is a trademark of PaymentNet, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

PaymentNet Contact:
Scott Collison
PaymentNet, Inc.
(925) 598-1106
scollison@paymentnet.com