Consumers Can Make Virtually Instant Person-to-Person Payments

HOUSTON, February 19, 2013 -- As person-to-person (P2P) financial transactions grow in popularity, PULSE, one of the nation’s leading debit/ATM networks, is now enabling Acculynk’s Payzur debit-based P2P solution across the PULSE® network to help meet the needs of its financial institution participants. The announcement means PULSE participants and their cardholders have access to an additional real-time P2P solution.

Acculynk’s Payzur allows consumers to send funds simply by authenticating the mobile- or web-initiated transaction with their debit card PIN via Acculynk’s PaySecure® online graphical PIN pad. Acculynk’s real-time P2P solution is as simple and fast as using PIN debit at the point of sale.
PULSE already uses Acculynk’s PaySecure technology to enable its Internet PIN Debit product to provide fast, easy PIN debit transactions online.

“Consumers generally prefer to use debit over cash for retail payments, and they are now looking for that same easy solution when it comes to paying friends, family and others,” said Judith McGuire, Executive Vice President of Product Management at PULSE. “We want to give our participants greater access to the P2P market opportunity which, in the U.S., is estimated to be between $80 billion and $120 billion annually,” she added.

With Payzur, consumers can use their smartphone, or other web-access device such as a tablet PC, along with their PIN, to send payments. Most cardholders will see transactions post to their account more quickly, and financial institutions will avoid the cost associated with ACH transactions. These transactions will settle with participating PULSE financial institutions through their existing network connectivity and settlement processes in place with PULSE, making them cost-effective, convenient and efficient.

“Recipients will have access to the funds almost immediately, making Payzur an attractive personal-commerce solution,” said John Kerley, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Acculynk’s Payzur division. “With earlier P2P solutions, payments sometimes took days, rather than the minutes or seconds of Payzur payments.”

About PULSE

PULSE, a Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) company, is a leading debit/ATM network, serving more than 6,300 financial institutions across the United States. This includes 4,300 issuers with which PULSE has direct relationships and more than 2,000 additional issuers through agreements PULSE has with other debit networks. PULSE links cardholders with ATMs and POS terminals at retail locations nationwide. Through its global ATM network, PULSE provides worldwide cash access for Diners Club and Discover cardholders through more than 900,000 ATM locations. The company also is a source of electronic payments research and is committed to providing its participants with education on emerging products, services and trends in the payments industry. For more information, visit www.pulsenetwork.com.

About Acculynk

Acculynk secures online transactions with a suite of software-only services backed by a patented authentication and encryption framework that provides greater security for issuers, EFT networks, merchants and payment processors. Acculynk’s PaySecure® utilizes a graphical PIN-pad for the secure entry of a consumer’s PIN online and is available to merchants through existing acquirer relationships, enabling speedy implementation. PaySecure is currently enabled on over 6,000 merchant websites. Acculynk has partnerships with 11 EFT networks to process PaySecure transactions and with six leading payment processors, and is certified with PULSE, First Data and Master Card, among other key industry leaders. Additionally, Acculynk solutions include PayLeap, a gateway and acquiring and card processing services, and Payzur, a debit-based P2P solution. Visit http://www.acculynk.com.