Checked The Bloomberg to determine date of MC/Mondex transaction. THIS DEAL WAS ANNOUNCED ON 11/18/96, BUT THE DEAL CLOSED ON 2/24/97! This news is hot off the press and you heard it here first! The same news article lists the following items:
- Mastercard has 380 million credit and debit cards that are accepted at more than 13 million acceptance loactions worldwide! That's 13 million!
- Mondex is owned by 19 major organizations worldwide:
NatWest Bank, Midland Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corp., Wells Fargo, AT&T, Chase Manhattan, First chicago NBD,
and 10 major Australian banks: Australia nad New Zealand Banking Group LTD., Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank LTD., Westpac Banking Corp., ANZ Banking Group, Bank of New Zealand, Countrywide Banking Corp. LTD., the National Bank of New Zealand, ASB Bank LTD. and Westpac Banking Corp. (New Zealand).
Hmmmm... looks like a decent market for IDX. My guess is that the owners of Mondex would want to establish it as the standard system for stored value cards. This would include supporting the system by purchasing Verifone card readers with Touchprint fingerscanning readers in them. Facilities would also need to be established to record fingerprints data for storage on the cards. Maybe Innovative Archival Solutions subsidiary could lend a hand. This is only the beginning!
P.S. Fingerscan is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.
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