Minnetonka, MN, February 3, 2003–Datacard Group today announced the implementation of the Datacard® Affina™ life cycle management system through a partnership with LogicaCMG, who have been appointed by Luottokunta to provide Finland’s first national smart card payment program. Datacard Group will implement the Affina™ life cycle management system which will provide all the card management needs for the initial launch, and ultimately manage the life cycle of the card population, including adding, deleting or modifying applications to any issued card. LogicaCMG will provide proven systems integration services to manage Luottokunta’s successful migration to the next-generation smart card payments processing platform.

Luottokunta’s implementation of the new smart card issuing, management and processing solution will reduce the time to bring new payment services to market and provide a flexible architecture that can expand to meet the changing market demand. This solution will also be more cost effective to maintain. The integrated platform is developed with an open systems technology to allow EMV (Europay/MasterCard/Visa) migration to multi-application chip cards based on GlobalPlatform® established standards. The application will support 1.5 million cards, which will be issued in two phases. The first phase will be launched in the 3rd quarter of 2003 with completion projected in January 2004.

“Our strategy is to offer increasingly versatile and flexible issuing, acquiring, card administration and processing services cost-efficiently to our members,” said Heikki Kapanen, president of Luottokunta. “With this solution we aim to strengthen our position by enabling the successful launch of multi-application smart card programs for the Finnish market. The end-to-end solution will combine the benefits of using modern open information technology with high performance and maintainability.”

The Datacard® Affina™ life cycle management system is designed to manage the multi-application smart card program. It manages all phases of pre-issuance, as well as enabling management of the card after it reaches the consumer. Applications can be loaded, blocked or deleted at any time, and new card-based services will be available for downloading quickly and efficiently via the Internet or private network. Affina also provides complete knowledge of every smart card issued, making it fast and simple to replace lost or stolen cards. In addition, Datacard will provide project management services to ensure a complete integration of the Luottokunta and LogicaCMG solution.

“We have developed Affina to be a complete life cycle management system to manage multi-application smart cards” says Martin Kearsley, senior vice president and general manager of Datacard’s software and solutions division. “The Luottokunta, LogicaCMG and Datacard partnership is very exciting–as the market for multi-applications and true post-issuance management starts to mature, we believe that this project will show just what business advantages can be gained by thinking ahead and delivering scalable, robust solutions that meet customer’s needs.”

“Enabling the development and launch of multi-application smart card programs is a natural progression of Luottokunta’s advanced processing capabilities,” said Nick Baines, director of LogicaCMG’s International Retail Finance division. “We believe that the total solution LogicaCMG is offering in conjunction with Datacard Group, provides Luottokunta with a compelling smart card application.”

About LogicaCMG

LogicaCMG is a leading global solutions company providing management and IT consultancy, systems integration, products, services and support. LogicaCMG’s clients operate across diverse markets including telecoms, financial services, energy and utilities, industry, distribution and transport and the public sector. The company has revenues over £1 billion and operates in 34 countries worldwide. Founded in 1969, LogicaCMG is the largest IT services company listed on the London Stock Exchange. More information can be found at: http://www.logicacmg.com.

About Luottokunta

Luottokunta is the leading payment card service company in Finland. Founded in 1965 Luottokunta is a co-operative credit institution jointly owned by Finnish banks and merchants. As a Visa group member, the company is the sole issuer and acquirer of Visa cards in Finland. Luottokunta is a dual issuer and acquirer for Eurocard/MasterCard products as well. Luottokunta offers its member banks, merchants and cardholders a variety of payment card related services. Cornerstones of operations are cost-effectiveness, risk management, reliability of the service and high technical know-how. Luottokunta is one of the pioneering companies in the world regarding secure card payments in internet, mobile and digi-tv environment. http://www.luottokunta.fi.