Carlson Marketing Point of Sale Rewards provides personalised loyalty experience in real time, at Point of Sale (POS)

Sydney, Australia, November 18, 2009 - Carlson Marketing and Welcome Real-time announced today agreement to launch an innovative loyalty offering in Australia. The offering, Carlson Marketing Point of Sale Rewards, enables customers to redeem points for purchases and helps credit and debit card issuers to deliver personalised offers at the point of sale. It provides banks and retailers with a unique opportunity to increase spend and brand loyalty at a lower cost and gather valuable information about their customers. When partnered with Carlson Marketing’s market leading technology solution, Carlson Marketing Point of Sale Rewards offers even more options to card issuers and merchants.

Welcome Real-time is a global loyalty solutions provider with customers in over 30 countries. They have been in the business of developing software and managing services for over 12 years, helping retail banks and retailers run their card business more profitably. Carlson Marketing works with major banks, airlines and retailers around the globe.

“Major loyalty programs need new ways to differentiate themselves and not allow competitors to commoditise the market. Our new solution enables a personalized experience at point of sale that is not currently available in Australia. Customers will find this very attractive,” said Michael O’Sullivan, Senior Vice President, Carlson Marketing.

Carlson Marketing Point of Sale Rewards now offers Australian banks and retailers the following advantages:

• Information you need; targeted rewards customers want: Banks and retailers will be able to better track and analyse customer buying behaviours to assist in delivering more intelligent, targeted rewards in real time, at the point of sale. Intelligent rewards eliminate promotional waste by delivering the right offer to the right customer at the right time, ultimately driving higher levels of customer satisfaction and increased purchases.
• Lower your costs while providing more value for your customers: Delivering targeted, personalised promotions at the point of sale via merchants reduces operational costs and achieves greater results as compared to more traditional methods of marketing promotions to a broad audience via direct mail or other mass advertising.
• Simplicity in participation: Retailers can allow customers to select any payment card to enroll and participate in a program. This feature will ensure selected issuer’s cards are more attractive to the customers while improving the retailers perceptions of the value card issuers’ bring to the transaction.

“Carlson Marketing is the ideal partner to drive Welcome Real-time forward in this new and exciting phase that marks our entry into the Australia and New Zealand,” said Francois Dutray, CEO, Welcome Real-time. “Carlson Marketing’s high-quality marketing services and relationships with key companies in Australian and New Zealand, combined with Welcome Real-time’s marketing-rich and real-time business solutions, will be invaluable for driving take up of this technology in Australia and New Zealand.”

The Carlson Marketing Point of Sale Rewards suite of services includes the following offerings for financial Institutions and retailers:

• Linkage to merchants’ POS for redemption – Offers the capability to link credit card issuers with merchants so that credit card customers will have the ability to use their card loyalty program points to make purchases in real time at the point of sale.
• Individual retailer loyalty programs - Card issuers can partner with retailers to implement an internal points program with either point-of-sale redemption or targeted promotional marketing offers (such as coupons or sampling offers).
• Merchant Rewards Network programs - Card issuers can participate in a program where customers who shop with participating retailers receive special discounts across a network of retailers along with either point-of-sale redemption or promotional marketing offers (such as coupons or sampling offers).

About Carlson Marketing

Carlson Marketing is the world’s leading relationship building company. Carlson Marketing designs and delivers loyalty, engagement and event programs for some of the world’s best known brands. Carlson Marketing’s two global service offerings – Brand Loyalty and Engagement & Events – are supported by six core capabilities: Strategy & Brand Planning; Creative and Communications; Decision Sciences; Award Services; Technology Services and Customer Service. Headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, Carlson Marketing has large regional offices in Toronto, London and Sydney. For more information about Carlson Marketing, please visit www.carlsonmarketing.com.

About Welcome Real-time

Welcome Real-time is a global loyalty solutions provider in the payment integrated value-added service space. Today, as the leading loyalty solutions provider to Fortune 500 banks, Welcome Real-time’s award winning XLS solution transforms the way banks and retailers design card loyalty and promotional marketing programs. Through a combination of Welcome’s innovative technology, global consulting and professional services, banks and retailers of all sizes can execute truly consumer-behavioral based card loyalty and reward decisions. This provides greater convenience and value for their customers, resulting in an increase in their business.

Welcome Real-time is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France. More information about Welcome Real-time can be found at www.welcome-rt.com.

Contact:
Michael O’Sullivan
Carlson Marketing, Sydney
+61 439 385727
Michael.O’Sullivan@carlson.com

Mavis Liew
Welcome Real-time, Singapore
+65 9749 3200
m.liew@welcome-rt.com

Press Contacts:
Suzanne Yap
Rice Communications
M: +65 8522 3221
E: suzanne.yap@ricecomms.com

Shruti Soni
Rice Communications
M: +91 98733 54750
E: shruti.soni@ricecomms.com

Aix-en-Provence, France, 09 Sept 2009 - Welcome Real-time today unveiled the latest version of their award winning loyalty solution – Welcome XLS 7.0. This latest release of Welcome XLS encompasses not only its proven loyalty solution on point of sale (POS) devices, but now, for the first time, extends this loyalty application to include online transactions, ATMs and bankwide loyalty.  

“This new release is part of our continual effort to expand the Welcome XLS features to help banks and retailers offer more innovative and attractive loyalty programmes across all channels, attract new customers and run their business more profitably,” said Sebastien Slim, VP global presales & product marketing, Welcome Real-time.

Welcome XLS 7.0 new key enhancements include:

A card technology-agnostic solution

Welcome XLS 7.0 has moved from a pure chip based solution to a technology agnostic solution, enabling it to manage any card technology (chip, magstripe, contactless) in a consistent way, providing the same customer experience and the same level of functionalities across the board. This works for any type of payment cards: credit, debit, prepaid, gift cards.

Benefits across all kind of transactions

Welcome XLS 7.0 can provide benefits to any transaction independently of where it is happening: be it on-us, off-us, internet, or international, in an online or offline or mix of online/offline environments.

Applicable for e-commerce and ATM

Physical and/or virtual retailers can now benefit from Welcome XLS on all of their transactions. In addition of the standalone POS or ePOS environments that are already deployed with Welcome XLS, the solution can now be used by the e-retailer for their internet transactions to provide real-time loyalty at the moment of payment exactly like on a regular POS or ePOS.

ATMs can now be used for displaying loyalty status, printing offers or simply for rewarding customers for withdrawing money from a specific ATM.

Bank-wide loyalty

Welcome XLS now can reward customers not only for their payment card transactions, but also for their loyalty towards the bank for all services such as opening a savings account, taking out a loan or an insurance policy. All this happens on the same Welcome XLS platform with the POS acting as the redemption channel.  

About Welcome Real-time

Welcome Real-time is a global loyalty solutions provider in the payment integrated value-added service space. Today, as the leading loyalty solutions provider to Fortune 500 banks, Welcome Real-time transforms the way banks design payment cards loyalty and promotional marketing programs with our award winning XLS solution. Through a combination of innovative technology, global consulting and marketing services, Welcome Real-time enables banks and merchants of all sizes to increase their business by enabling them to execute profitable card loyalty and reward decisions, thereby driving increased acceptance of card payment usage amongst merchants and greater convenience and value for customers.

Welcome Real-time is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France. More information about Welcome Real-time can be found at www.welcome-rt.com.

For more information contact:

Mavis Liew

Welcome Real-time

T: +65 6870 8642

E: m.liew@welcome-rt.com

For press enquiries contact:

Singapore, June 19^th 2009 - Welcome Real-time today announced that the company has been awarded the ‘Best Innovation in a Loyalty Program’ award in VRL’s annual awards dinner at Cards & Payments Europe 2009. This award is recognized based on its partnership with Venture Infotek, India’s leading transaction processing company.

The Cards & Payments 2009 award recognizes the contribution of Welcome Real-time and Venture Infotek in the launch of the next generation of loyalty offerings in India.

“This award highlights the success of our joint solution that aims at providing new and exciting solutions for stimulating card activation and usage in India’s increasingly consumption-driven economy” commented François Dutray, Welcome Real-time CEO. “Indeed, our solution allows card payment businesses and retailers to deliver personalised offers and redemption alternatives at the point of sale, along with lower marketing costs and enhanced loyalty benefits”, he added.

The announcement was made at the annual Cards & Payments Europe 2009 Awards gala dinner, in Prague on June, 18^th 2009.

The judging has been undertaken by an international panel of VRL Financial News journalists and an external panel, along with other independent analysts and consultants.

Cards & Payments Europe 2009 Awards are organised by Cards International and Electronic Payments International newsletters.

About Welcome Real-time

Welcome Real-time is a global loyalty solutions provider in the payment integrated value-added service space. Today, as the leading loyalty solutions provider to Fortune 500 banks, Welcome Real-time transforms the way banks design payment cards loyalty and promotional marketing programs with our award winning XLS solution. Through a combination of innovative technology, global consulting and marketing services, Welcome Real-time enables banks and merchants of all sizes to increase their business by enabling them to execute profitable card loyalty and reward decisions, thereby driving increased acceptance of card payment usage amongst merchants and greater convenience and value for customers.

Welcome Real-time is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France. More information about Welcome Real-time can be found at www.welcome-rt.com.

PR Contacts

- Partnership with Welcome Real-time announced -

June 12, 2009 – Barclaycard, a leading payment provider in the UK, has announced that it has taken a step forward with its plan to introduce a retailer rewards scheme by signing an agreement with Welcome Real-time to provide the scheme’s IT infrastructure.

Welcome Real-time will work with Barclaycard to develop the software that will enable Barclaycard customers to benefit from a retailer rewards scheme that is expected to encompass retailers ranging from sole traders to major high street names.

Dan Salmons, Director of Payment Innovations at Barclaycard said: “Barclaycard is committed to making life easier for its customers, both consumers and retailers and this scheme will enable up to ten million of our card holders to be rewarded when using their Barclaycard to purchase goods and services with retailers participating in the scheme.”

“Barclaycard has close to 90,000 retailer relationships, many of which we expect to participate in the programme, and we believe this scheme will change the way people shop in the UK. That is why we are partnering with a world leading loyalty solutions provider to ensure that we develop a simple hassle free rewards scheme that will truly benefit our customers.”

Welcome Real-time is the global loyalty solutions provider for banks and retailers of all sizes and is headquartered in France.

Francois Dutray, CEO of Welcome Real-time, said of the announcement: “We are delighted to be working with Barclaycard in the UK to develop a rewards scheme that will make a huge impact on the British High Street. It is a great opportunity to develop a scheme with the potential for millions of customers and many retailers in the UK, whether large or small.”

Barclaycard will make further announcements about the development of the rewards scheme in the coming months.

Notes to Editors

About Barclaycard

Barclaycard, part of Barclays Global and Retail Commercial Banking division, is a leading global payment business which helps consumers, retailers and businesses to make and accept payments flexibly, and to access short-term credit when needed.

The company is one of the pioneers of new forms of payments and is at the forefront of developing viable contactless and mobile payment schemes for today and cutting edge forms of payment for the future.  It also issues credit and charge cards to corporate customers and the UK Government.  Barclaycard partners with a wide range of organisations across the globe to offer their customers or members payment options and credit.

In addition to the UK, Barclaycard operates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle and Far East.

Key facts published in February 2009;

-       number of UK customers: 11.7m

-       number of International customers: 11.6m

-       number of retailer/merchant relationships: 89,000

About Welcome Real-time

Welcome Real-time (Welcome) is a global loyalty solutions provider in the payment integrated value-added service space. Today, as the leading loyalty solutions provider to Fortune 500 banks, Welcome Real-time’s award winning XLS solution transforms the way banks and retailers design card loyalty and promotional marketing programs.

Through a combination of Welcome’s innovative technology, global consulting and professional services, banks and retailers of all sizes can execute truly consumer-behavioral based card loyalty and reward decisions. This provides greater convenience and value for their customers, resulting in an increase in their business.

Welcome Real-time is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France. More information about Welcome Real-time can be found at www.welcome-rt.com.

PR Contacts:

Shruti Soni
Consultant
Rice Communications
Phone: +65 8296 6399
Email: shruti.soni@ricecomms.com

Sonya Madeira-Stamp
Managing Partner
Rice Communications
Phone: +65 9450 1090
Email: sonya.madeira@ricecomms.com