First Data Iberica Appoints TNS

The three-year contract with First Data Iberica (FDI), the subsidiary for Spain and Portugal, will make FDIs payment processing services available at 18,000 privately owned point-of-sale terminals across the country. TNS will provide FDI with dial-up connectivity anticipated to transmit millions of dial-up transactions per year between the companys headquarters in Madrid, 10,500 terminals in newsagents and tobacconists, and 3,000 terminals in gas and petrol service stations in Spain. Using its private network, TNS will also provide back-up services to the 1,500 GPRS terminals that FDI will introduce this year to speed up processing of payments and to reduce the costs of processing payments in remote rural locations. The contract was awarded in a fiercely contested tender on the basis of network availability and coverage. TNS network is managed 24 hours per day, 365 days per year from operating centers in the U.K. and U.S. The contract builds on an existing long-term relationship between TNS and First Data in France, Germany, Ireland, the U.K. and U.S.