EDS Launches Mid-Range Card Platform in Latin America

Brazil’s BV Financeira Signs Six-Year Contract and Becomes First Client of New Platform

São Paulo, BRAZIL – EDS today announced the launch of a new mid-range card platform that will allow a wider scope of financial institutions to introduce more creative, differentiated products within a shortened time frame. The new solution offers robust functionality for private label and bank issuing, both regional and global. The mid-range card platform is already operational in the EDS regional Service Management Centres in Brazil.

Providing proven customer benefits, the new card solution presents substantially lower costs than a mainframe platform, combined with volume and consumption-based pricing which transforms traditional fixed costs into variable costs. Private label and bank card issuers will also find a reduced time to market and comprehensive authorization tools to ensure compliance with risk policies. EDS’ mid-range card platform is also differentiated by linking traditional credit and instalment loan products, enabling a single view of customer account balances.

São Paulo-based BV Financeira has signed a six-year agreement with EDS to process its credit card transactions, making the Brazilian financial institution the first client to launch a credit card product using EDS’ new mid-range card platform. BV Financeira’s first card production was launched with both MasterCard and Visa cards within a two-month time frame by EDS. BV Financeira anticipates its card portfolio will grow to approximately three million cards in the next six years.

“Our success with BV Financeira demonstrates EDS’ innovative offerings and reaffirms our global financial services expertise, including deep knowledge of card processing in Latin America,” said Bob Segert, vice president, global financial products at EDS. “Our mid-range card platform gives financial institutions the opportunity to gain entry into the card marketplace without heavy capital investment or long lead times, all on an architecture that ensures scalability.”

More than 100 EDS professionals were directly involved with the development and launch of this card platform in Brazil. Additionally, EDS relied heavily on the best-in-class technology of three EDS Agility Alliance partners: EMC (storage), Oracle (database licenses) and Sun Microsystems (servers). Each partner worked jointly with EDS to define the architecture for the new card platform, as well as the environment needed to develop and test the solution.

“Currently, EDS Brazil processes 4.5 million cards annually, totalling 2.1 billion transactions for its financial services clients,” said Chu Tung, EDS country manager, Brazil. “EDS occupies the leading position in cardholder transaction processing in Brazil and, globally, has operations in more than 18 countries.”.

Some 25,000 EDS employees work on finance-related projects for about 200 customers in 30 countries for clients such as ABN Amro, Aon, Bank of Canada, Bank of Queensland, la Caixa, CIBC, Commonwealth Bank Group, KBC, Korea First Bank, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland, SociétéGénérale, Visa and Westpac.