Global card processing company Certegy expects to receive shortly certification to process American Express cards at its Melbourne, Australia processing centre.
Later this year, Certegy will become the first fully certified processor in Australia to receive certification from American Express. From its Melbourne, Australia processing centre, Certegy will be able to process American Express Card products or programmes that are issued in any country in the Asia Pacific region.
Certegy, a long time supplier of card processing software in the region, established a processing centre in Melbourne last year. In Melbourne, as well as in its processing centres in the United States, South America and Europe, Certegy operates its world-renowned BASE2000™ payments processing platform. Entirely developed by and proprietary to Certegy, BASE2000 was the industry’s first third-party global payments processing platform that supports multi-national card issuers with portfolios in multiple languages and multiple currencies across multiple continents.
“With the capability to process American Express cards, BASE2000 will enable financial institutions to issue all major cards on a single operating platform,” stated Sam Burns, General Manager Certegy Card Services Australia. “Certegy is the proven third-party card processor in the region,” he continued, “We have already contracted with one of Australia’s leading financial services companies and will begin processing American Express cards for them this year.”
Burns stated that the financial institutions will retain full ownership of their American Express portfolios, and Certegy will provide the processing platform. He also added that the system supports “consolidated accounts” which permits an institution to offer and understand the impact of aggregate usage and risk at a family or business level of different card schemes – e.g., American Express and Visa and MasterCard accounts that may be issued and available to different members of the same family or a business.
“With our state-of-the-art processing platform, we can implement any card program within 6 months of a new relationship,” stated Larry Towe, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Certegy. “We will be processing over 4 million cards at our Australian centre by year end and, we are experiencing strong interest for outsourced processing services from several financial institutions in Australia and the greater Asia Pacific market.”
“BASE2000’s sophisticated processing technology, built using unique Qualification Set™ software, allows us the flexibility, scalability and speed-to-market that is unmatched by any other third-party card processor,” said Towe
