Welcome receives the ROI of the Year award from The Banker

Welcome has won the "ROI of the Year" award in The Banker "Technology Awards 2004." Welcomes XLS solution is the worlds first EMV application to win formal recognition of its role in reducing costs and increasing revenues.The goal of the The Banker Technology Awards is to inform the financial industry of the technologies that have made a real contribution to advancing shareholder value and customer service within financial institutions over the past 12 months. The Banker also recognized XLS as Highly Commended in the "Smart Card Solution" Category. The core feature highlighted in this special acknowledgement was the capability of XLS to run multiple dynamic loyalty programs, in real time, at the point of purchase. XLS has been designed to address the real profitability issues affecting banks in mature and developing markets. Fundamentally, XLS dramatically cuts the cost of communicating with prospective and existing customers, while giving banks a strategic tool to increase card uptake and usage. The strategic use of XLS directly contributes to a banks non-interest income, through increasing customers and card usage fee income. The interest income of banks increases through the corresponding growth in revolving credit and cross selling other financial products to customers attracted to the bank by the features of the XLS credit or debit card. The most powerful feature of XLS is that it enables a bank to partner with an infinite number of merchants who can offer their own marketing rewards to valuable customers, in real time, from the RFM (recency, frequency and monetary value) information communicated through the card. The bank meanwhile can run their own loyalty points and/or cash bank program across all or some of the participating merchants. The ability for the bank to offer additional features to merchants assists in increasing revenue raising opportunities and provides an alternative to decreasing fees for competitive advantage. The costs of operating a card loyalty program become negligible through the automated, real time technology and through cost sharing with participating merchants. Traditional costs of points calculation, postage, telecommunication and reward redemption are substantially reduced or non-existent. The net result is that the cost of providing rewards from card usage is minimized and the value of the actual rewards to the cardholders increases exponentially. The benefit to the cardholder is maximized through the high level of personalization of the rewards programs as well as the convenience of the redemption process. The main beneficiary therefore, the real driver of improved returns, is the cardholder. Unlike co-branded card or loyalty programs with a small number of suppliers, the ability for a bank to run individual or collective programs across hundreds or thousands of merchants with XLS creates a real value proposition for cardholders. As Mashreqbank noted, the value of the bonuses to cardholders of their WOW Card is between 2-20 years value in annual fees. Leveraging EMV Investment In awarding the ROI of the Year, The Banker paid attention to the fact that the business case for investment in EMV has been difficult to justify until now. XLS changes that scenario by offering features that add real value for a bank desiring to leverage the EMV infrastructure investment. Akbank provides a key case study of a bank leveraging their investment in EMV with XLS. The Banker technology panel of judges were thoroughly impressed with the detailed analysis and cost return figures (Welcome) was able to give for their work with Akbank and cited the performance figures Akbanks Axess Card achieved: - Cardholder acquisition - 1 million customers in the first 8 months - Cardholder growth - 42% cardholder growth in its 3rd year, twice as fast as the rest of the market - Attract new customers and cross sell products - 59% of new customers to the bank as a result of Axess Card - Merchant network growth- grew over 4 times in 3 years (to reach 43,000 participating merchant out