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To: sPD who wrote (24)	3/14/1998 10:10:00 PM
From: sPD	Respond to of 1341

Mondex cash card heads for Quebec test Wednesday, March 11, 1998 By RICHARD BLACKWELL Financial Services Reporter The Financial Post The Mondex Canada electronic cash consortium will announce today the expansion of its tests to Sherbrooke, Que. Mondex, which has running a trial of the cash card in Guelph, Ont., will add other sites later this year. While the Guelph test has not been as successful as hoped, it has generated enough interest for Mondex to try new cities. By expanding to Sherbrooke, a city of 120,000 about 150 kilometres east of Montreal, Mondex will be able to try the card in a primarily French environment, with the participation of Quebec-based Mondex members National Bank of Canada and Le Mouvement des caisses Desjardins. Mondex will also introduce the card to Kingston, Ont., the site of a test of the rival Exact cash card, but that experiment is closing down at the end of March. Cash cards store money on a computer chip that can be loaded at teller machines or special phones. When a purchase is made, the cash value is transferred to the merchant's card or terminal. Sherbrooke is the right size for a controlled trial and is far enough from Montreal that few residents commute to the city. Guelph's proximity to Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Toronto was a problem, because the Mondex card could not be used in any of those centres. Cardholders who lived or worked outside Guelph had limited use of it. But the Guelph trial will be expanded too, as customers of some of the newer Mondex members that have branches in that city are issued cards. [The following is IFM's release of last June 17 on its role in bringing Mondex into the Canadian scene.] MPACT Immedia takes aim at Internet Smartcard purchasing Teams up with Royal Bank and Mondex to guarantee buyer security Montreal, June 17, 1997 - MPACT Immedia, a world leader in Electronic Commerce, announced today a $1.2-million project to roll out one of the world's first secure Smartcard systems for the Internet. MPACT Immedia will work with Royal Bank of Canada to link MPACT Immedia's secure Internet payment product, BuyWay, to the Mondex Smartcard system. MPACT Immedia already is a partner with Royal Bank in CAN-ACT, a business-to-business electronic bill payment system which went national last year. The Royal Bank and CIBC brought the British-developed Mondex Smartcard to Canada in 1995 and have signed up virtually all the major banks to this micropayment system, which has been billed as a virtual replacement for cash. Smartcards could take over from credit cards for many small purchases and could break through the psychological block many people have about buying goods on the Internet. "Leading researchers like Killen & Associates predict that electronic-cash transactions on the Internet will explode from virtually zero today to $30 billion a year by 2005," said MPACT Immedia's President and CEO Brian Edwards. "We and our partners believe the key to tapping this vast E-cash opportunity is to develop a totally secure, state-of-the-art payment service which can be marketed throughout the world." Major funding for the Smartcard project has come from CANARIE, a consortium of organizations committed to the development of Canada's communications infrastructure and the creation of next-generation network products. The Internet project - led by MPACT Immedia - will develop a single payment system that, in addition to Smartcards, will also accept credit cards with SET (secure electronic transaction) and E-cheques. But, the most far-reaching application is the Smartcard system. Smartcards are embedded with a minuscule computer chip into which users can electronically download funds from their bank accounts. Instead of using credit cards with large spending limits and hefty interest charges, buyers can make small purchases with the lower denominations of money in their Smartcards. They can also use the cards to buy products from merchandisers on the Internet in total security. The codes in Smartcards are encrypted, so when the card is swiped through a device on a computer terminal, no personal numbers can be stolen. This kind of Smartcard reader will become a standard feature on most computer equipment next year. These totally-secure cards will be read and processed by MPACT Immedia's BuyWay(tm), which is considered the most comprehensive Internet payment system available in North America. The current BuyWay system accepts credit cards from any buyer in the world and provides settlement with any bank in Canada or the United States. MPACT Immedia recently announced a partnership agreement to market BuyWay in tandem with Microsoft's Windows NTr. Work on the Internet payment project will be performed by Immedia Telematics, a related company which performs MPACT Immedia's research and development. In addition to Royal Bank, other participants in the venture include Tandem Computers, Quebecor Multimedia and Global Payment Services. MPACT Immedia provides leading global enterprises such as Dell Computers, Bank of America, Citibank and British Aerospace with comprehensive Electronic Commerce software and transaction services. MPACT Immedia Corporation is headquartered in Montreal. It offers services through four operating subsidiaries: MPACT Immedia Inc. and TotalNet Inc. in Montreal; MPACT Immedia Systems Inc. in Livonia, Michigan; and ISDN Wire Service in Toronto - along with international offices in London and Beijing.

To: sPD who wrote (24)	3/14/1998 10:12:00 PM
From: sPD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1341

There was a major update in today's Financial Post on the status of the Mondex intiative. Its special report on Electronic Commerce included a feature article entitled "Mondex rises to the top of stored value card heap". The article explains Mondex's leading role in smartcard technology having been endorsed by all major Canadian banks. MPACT is not mentioned specifically. Mondex has a way to go to gain total mainstream acceptance but if it flys as a vehicle for Internet purchases or other fund transfers, MPACT stands to profit handsomely.