For Immediate Release

Element Payment Services Incorporates Account Updater into Comprehensive Suite of PCI Compliant Payment Processing Solutions

Account Updater helps companies seamlessly update, maintain and securely store customers’ card data, maximizing approval rates for recurring and card-on-file billing.

Phoenix, AZ (February 15, 2011) -- Element Payment Services, the industry leader in PCI compliant payment processing, today announces the launch of its Account Updater technology available for both merchants and software providers. Element’s Account Updater helps accurately maintain stored customer credit card data for recurring charges and card-on-file billing in compliance with PCI DSS requirements, which can be a challenge for many companies.

Element has worked with Visa and MasterCard through its sponsoring financial institution to address the challenges companies face to maintain accurate customer card data. Account Updater works in conjunction with Element’s PASS tokenization technology for secure, offsite cardholder data storage. Together, these innovative technologies allow businesses to automatically receive updated information to existing customer records. Account Updater works by querying the card brands (Visa and MasterCard) for up-to-date account information to prevent billing expired or invalid cards, reducing declined transactions and authorization-related chargebacks and expenses.

“According to MasterCard, on any billing cycle, the average merchant experiences a 25 to 30 percent decline rate on recurring payments – dramatically more than the average of 5 percent for card present transactions. Many of these declines result from invalid expiration dates or card numbers. As a result, merchants must spend time contacting the customer for alternative payment forms, which is not only a costly administrative expense, but also presents the cardholder with the opportunity to cancel service.” said Sean Kramer, Element Payment Services, president and CEO. “We are excited to work with Visa and MasterCard to offer our Account Updater technology to help merchants securely update and maintain their customers’ card data, and to help software providers integrate this technology with their application to update tokenized credit cards,” says Kramer.

Harms Software, creators of award-winning Millennium Software for the salon and spa industry has incorporated Account Updater into its business management application. “Many of our customers have a membership-based business model which requires them to keep accurate credit card information on file for monthly billing,” says John Harms, founder and CEO of Harms Software. “Account Updater has decreased the back-office inefficiency and related expense associated with contacting customers to track down up-to-date payment information. With PCI compliant solutions such as PASS tokenization technology and Account Updater, our customers are able to focus on growing their businesses rather than payment collections,” says Harms.

Software vendors interested in providing Account Updater to their customers can integrate this technology via Element’s Express API.

About Element Payment Services, Inc.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Element Payment Services, Inc. provides fully integrated PCI DSS compliant payment processing solutions to merchants through partnerships with leading independent software vendors (ISVs). Engineered using service-oriented architecture, Element's Express Processing Platform allows for easy integration and supports advanced technologies such as point-to-point encryption, tokenization and authentication.

Processing more than $6 billion in annual transaction volume, Element's simple and secure payment solutions allow customers to easily comply with industry security requirements such as PCI compliance, significantly reducing the risk associated with handling cardholder data. Element’s innovative technology, Hosted Payments, was the first payment processing solution on the market to take software providers out of scope of PCI DSS/ PA-DSS compliance requirements.

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