90-Day Card Solution Implementation Record Set by CoreCard Team

90-Day Card Solution Implementation Record Set By CoreCard Team

Implementation Primes Fingerhut Direct for 2003 Holiday Retailing Season

NORCROSS, Ga., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- CoreCard Software, Inc., a *PaySys International Inc. spin-off and premier provider of next-generation payment management and credit card transaction processing systems, today announced that it has successfully completed the implementation of its CoreISSUE(TM) credit management and transaction processing system at Fingerhut Direct, a direct to the consumer marketing company.

"The 2003 holiday season is an important one for our company. We expect a higher volume of authorization requests from our existing Credit Account Holders and an increase in new credit applications," says Michael Holmes of Fingerhut Direct. "A system that can handle a dramatic increase in transaction volume in this and future seasons, is key. The CoreCard professional services team exceeded our expectations with its speed and responsiveness to our needs."

The implementation at Fingerhut included 80 customized features, 11 custom interfaces to existing and external systems including those at Equifax and the conversion of existing accounts from Fingerhut's incumbent processing system. It also included the delivery of an initial version of CoreCOLLECT(TM), a workflow-driven credit recovery application that is utilized by Fingerhut's in-house team as well as its outsourced collections service providers. "The implementation was seamless," says Michael Holmes, manager of Credit Systems at Fingerhut Direct. "The switch-over to CoreISSUE went unnoticed by our customers and feedback our customer service group was unanimously positive."

CoreISSUE enables Fingerhut to operate its credit operations as a real-time enterprise with real-time feeds to existing systems such as the company's order processing, fulfillment and online credit account application systems. Managers can access real-time customer data and up-to-the-minute transaction history, as well as react to customer demands by introducing innovative credit products and services in days as opposed to weeks or months required with other systems. The application's real-time properties help reduce and in some cases remove the lag times from key business processes such as credit risk management by providing managers with the appropriate data in a convenient format as and when they are needed.

"The unprecedented 90-day Contract-to-Conversion-to-'Go Live' timeframe is validation for the $35 million spent on product development since the mid- 1990s to build financial applications that are flexible, adaptable and ensure speed to market," says Leland Strange, managing director at CoreCard Software. "While Fingerhut is among the first to recognize and embrace this paradigm and its importance in maintaining a competitive advantage, we are confident that other forward thinking companies will follow. It is this market segment that CoreCard looks to serve."

CoreISSUE is an integrated issuing, credit account management and transaction software application. Private label card products as well as bankcard schemes are supported with inherent language and currency localization capabilities. CoreISSUE provides comprehensive account management functionality and real-time processing of payments and transactions including authentication, authorization, clearing, settlement, customer service, dispute management, statement processing and letters generation. The application was developed using the company's patent-pending CoreENGINE(TM) universal lending and credit transaction processing software platform.

CoreENGINE contains libraries of pre-built components for the processing, billing and settlement of financial transactions which enable applications such as CoreISSUE to be built, deployed, operated and changed with less cost and greater speed. The platform's open architecture and object-oriented design enables the introduction of new technologies as they emerge as well as ease of integration with a variety of third-party applications.

About Fingerhut Direct Marketing, Inc.
Fingerhut Direct Marketing, Inc. is a direct to the consumer marketing company selling a broad selection of general merchandise. Getting its start in 1948 by manufacturing and selling plastic seat covers from a Minneapolis garage, Fingerhut quickly grew into the catalog industry's dominant general merchandise retailer with additional success via e-commerce. Today, Fingerhut delivers brand name values on everything from house wares to consumer electronics and apparel to millions of consumers nationwide. For more information visit http://www.fingerhut.com .

About CoreCard Software, Inc.
CoreCard provides real-time cardholder and merchant account management and transaction processing solutions for issuers and acquirers worldwide. Its applications automate, streamline and optimize business processes associated with the set-up, administration and management of credit card, loan and merchant accounts, the processing of transactions and the collections, recovery and reporting functions associated with those accounts. Headquartered in Norcross, Ga., CoreCard is a subsidiary of Intelligent Systems Corporation [Amex: INS]. For more information, call 770-564-8000 or visit http://www.corecard.com .

*PaySys International, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of First Data Corporation.

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