Innovative travel operators increasingly relying on Wire Card

E-Payment provider continues to extent partner and client base in the travel & transport segment

Berlin/Munich-Grasbrunn, November 16, 2005 – Wire Card AG, listed on the Prime Standard of the German stock exchange and one of the leading European providers of payment systems, risk management and communications services, managed to gain numerous customers for its industry solution geared especially to tourism enterprises in the second half of this year. More and more online travel agencies are opting for Wire Card thanks to the special flexibility made available by this payment services provider to the dynamically growing tourism market. New clients include: Air Kiosk (an Internet booking engine), Blu Express (Airline), IXEO S.A. (B2B-travel portal), Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, Olotels.com (B2C hotel portal) as well as Ypsilon.Net AG.

Jörg Möller, Vice President of Sales at Wire Card AG: "We have found a solution comprising 85 payment and risk management processes in response to the increasing globalization of business relations with which travel operators are being confronted in the online sector."

On November 21, 2005, the new Italian low-cost airline Blu Express (blu-express.com) will commence operations. The decisive reason for the decision to use Wire Card for processing online payments was the international orientation of the platform and the availability of interfaces with the Air Kiosk booking engine deployed.

Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts will be using Wire Card for processing credit card payments for its global Internet reservations.

The global tourism & hotel platform ( www.ixeo.com ) of the Swiss provider IXEO Interactive Travel S.A. makes comprehensive travel offers available for online reservation and payment booking both to end customers and travel agencies ( www.ixeo.com ). Apart from hotels, flights and hired cars, the platform provides additional local services for direct reservations and for topic-related search functions.

The hotel reservation portal olotels.com operated by London-based Olotels Ltd. comprises more than 25,000 associated hotels worldwide along with online reservation services in five languages. A multilingual call center is available for telephone reservations and personal customer service.

The cooperative venture with Ypsilon.Net AG from Frankfurt combines the core competences of both enterprises. Ypsilon.Net programs modular designed Internet booking engines (Internet Booking Engine, IBE) as web-based solutions for the travel industry. The Internet technology service provider has integrated the Wire Card platform into its booking engine as a predefined interface.

Wire Card provides innovative industry modules for the airline and tourism sector. Risk management mechanisms especially geared to the respective merchants make it possible to effectively minimize defaults in payment. Speedy integration into the company's IT environment is being ensured e.g. by already having integrated various booking engines such as 2e Systems, Caesar, Inovasoft AG/Dynares, Air Kiosk, Ypsilon.Net as well as Anixe into the Wire Card platform.

Wire Card AG:

Wire Card AG: Wire Card AG is one of the leading European providers of payment systems, risk management and communications services. The company provides customers with a wide range of payment options (credit card, direct debit, transfer, invoice, cash in advance, debit cards) along with CLICK2PAY as an alternative Internet payment system. In addition to payment processing via the Internet, the software platform also facilitates seamless integration of all distribution channels such as call centers and points of sale. The company managed to reach its leading market position in the field of communications thanks to its virtual call center technology platform for professional end-customer relationship management. Its customers in the communications sector include MAP&GUIDE, Koch Media, Konami and Ubi Soft, to name but a few. The payment platform is being used by more than 2,000 companies across the globe, including flydba.com, HSE24, QVC, Sony Europe and Tiscali. Wire Card AG is listed on the Prime Standard of the German stock exchange in Frankfurt (under ISIN DE0007472060).

Wire Card PR&IR office
Iris Stöckl
Bretonischer Ring 4
85630 Grasbrunn
Tel.: +49 (0) 89 4424 2034
Fax: +49 (0) 89 4424 2100
E-Mail: iris.stoeckl@wirecard.com
www.wirecard.de

COMMUNICATION Presse und PR
Jacqueline Althaller
Ainmillerstraße 9
80801 München
Tel: +49 (0) 89 28 66 99 17
Fax: +49 (0) 89 2 80 23 88
E-Mail: info@communicationmunich.de
www.communicationmunich.de