Central Bank of Oman Selects ACI BASE24-eps for National ATM/POS Switch

Source: ACI Worldwide, Inc.

NEW YORK, May 17, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ACI Worldwide, Inc. (Nasdaq:ACIW), leading international provider of electronic payments software and solutions, today announced that Central Bank of Oman (CBO) has selected BASE24-eps® as the foundation for the new national switch in Oman. BASE24-eps is ACI's market-leading software for online payments processing. The CBO has also selected ACI Simulation Services for Enterprise Testing™ (ASSET) which will be used by the bank internally for testing, as well as by the national switch member banks for the certification process with CBO. BASE24-eps will be the retail payments engine for the debit processing platform, providing intelligent transaction authentication, authorisation and routing capabilities. The project involves consolidating the previous two independent switches into one central solution under the ownership of the Central Bank, and migrating all financial institutions onto the common platform. It will be processing volumes of approximately 5 million ATM and POS transactions per month. The new system will be able to handle EMV transactions, and the project includes a national roll-out of EMV technology for all financial institutions in Oman. A senior official from CBO said, "This is a significant investment in the infrastructure of Oman, and we wanted to invest in the best technologies in the market to deliver a future-proof system. It needed to provide multi-currency and multi-institution support, as well as the essential real-time message switching for authorization and international network connections. The state of the art BASE24-eps has shown it is capable of supporting the very largest systems, and was the obvious choice for a project of this importance." Ralph Dangelmaier, president, global markets and services at ACI Worldwide, said, "The Central Bank of Oman outlined its plans for a national payment system in 2003, and this final project is the culmination of that work. The CBO recognises the vital role technology can play, and the agility, reliability and scalability of BASE24-eps will help the bank deliver the solution it needs to the entire country." ACI will be delivering the project, with support from HP, the prime contractor for the services, along with Industrial Management Technology and Contracting (IMTAC) LLC as a local partner. For more information about BASE24-eps please visit www.aciworldwide.com/BASE24-eps. For more information on ASSET please visit www.aciworldwide.com/ASSET. About ACI Worldwide, Inc. ACI Worldwide is a leading provider of software and services solutions to initiate, manage, secure and operate electronic payments for financial institutions, retailers and processors around the world. ACI offers a vision for the future of an integrated solution that can meet all their payment needs – from a single service to a complete toolset. ACI products deliver payment processing, online banking, fraud prevention and detection, and back-office services, providing agility, reliability, manageability and scale to customers around the world. Visit ACI Worldwide atwww.aciworldwide.com. CONTACT: ACI Worldwide Catherine Eyres +44 (0) 1923 812741 Catherine.eyres@aciworldwide.com