Peppercoin Small Payments Processing Suite Available to First Data Channels

Peppercoin offers merchants a hosted small-payment service, based on credit and debit card usage, which enables merchants to optimize revenue and profitability. Peppercoin is the only small-payment vendor that addresses the digital, mobile and physical point-of-sale (POS) markets. Significant Market Opportunity: Consumers are demonstrating a clear and growing preference to use their credit and debit cards for all sizes and types of purchases. In a 2004 study, Ipsos-Insight estimated that roughly 37.5 million US consumers would choose to use their credit and debit cards for transactions below $5. Each year, more than 354 billion cash transactions occur in the U.S. for less than $5 at the physical point-of-sale, representing $1.32 trillion in aggregate revenue. Leading markets include vending ($18 billion), parking ($10 billion), coin-op ($6 billion) and quick-serve-restaurants ($110 billion). The online and mobile small payment opportunities are substantial as well; fueled by music, games, video, publishing and services. TowerGroup estimates the digital micropayments opportunity reached more than $3 billion in 2004. And a September 2004 Ipsos-Insight study revealed that, in just one year, the number of US consumers who have made small online purchases grew 250%, from 4 million to 14 million.