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June 02, 2003

LEVEL FOUR WINS AWARD FOR THE BEST SMART CARD SERVICES SOLUTION

The Banker magazine names EMV FastTrack as the best smart card service
in retail markets

London, 2 June 2003 - Level Four Software, a provider of best-of-breed ATM test and development software today announced it has won an award from The Banker magazine for the best smart card services award in the retail markets category. Level Four won the award for its EMV FastTrack tool, which assists the migration of a bank's ATM network to support EMV (Europay and MasterCard, Visa) smart cards.

The Banker, part of The Financial Times Group, is awarding companies that have developed best of breed, innovative and successful technology in the financial industry over past 12 months. The award is being presented to Level Four at a ceremony in London on 3 June 2003.

The key feature of EMV FastTrack is its ability to shorten the deployment cycle for banks to introduce new services at the ATM, by reducing the time it takes to test EMV applications and infrastructure. This is particularly important as the European banking industry faces a deadline of January 2005 to meet EMV smart card specifications. EMV FastTrack creates virtual cards and simulates all the components in the banking network from end to end, automating the testing process so that staff no longer have to conduct manual testing, which is both costly and time consuming.

Abbey National was the first UK bank to work with Level Four to test major upgrades to its entire ATM network with the imminent arrival of EMV smart cards. EMV FastTrack was an evolution of this project which began three years ago. Following the success at Abbey National, other financial institutions have also adopted technologies from Level Four including Nationwide and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Martin Macmillan, CEO, Level Four comments on the award: "We are delighted that our EMV product has been recognised as a leading edge technology in the retail banking sector. EMV FastTrack was developed in direct response to banks specific needs to meet forthcoming EMV standards and we feel very privileged that The Banker has acknowledged our commitment to the industry."

Level Four's primary software technology is the ATM Channel Development Suite - a comprehensive toolkit that allows financial institutions to develop, test and rapidly deploy new content and applications within their ATM delivery channels. It includes ATM Simulator, ATM Developer and EMV FastTrack plug-ins, allowing the rapid introduction of EMV compliance. The ATM Channel Development Suite also enables financial institutions to offer relevant, personalised and interactive functionality to customers through their existing ATM networks.

About Level Four
Level Four’s development and testing products have been built to address the needs of ATM deployers seeking to maximize their investment in the ATM channel.

BRIDGE:test is targeted at banks and ATM deployers who are running, or seeking to run, a modern ATM network based on the industry-wide CEN/XFS open standard.  BRIDGE:test provides an enterprise regression test platform to test CEN/XFS based applications in a controlled environment. Customers gain benefits of the breadth of testing and improved quality assurance as well as reduced time to market due to increased testing efficiencies.

ATM Developer is targeted at banks and ATM deployers who are running states & screens protocol controlled applications such as those based on NDC or 912. ATM Developer provide a graphical environment in which customers can maintain the configuration file from creation to validation.

Since 1995, Level Four has built an impressive global customer base of banks and payments processors including, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Bank of America, CIBC, VocaLink and Standard Bank of South Africa. Headquartered in Dunfermline, Scotland, Level Four has offices in Dubai and Charlotte, NC, USA. http://www.levelfour.com  

Level Four’s online ATM industry resource: www.atmindustryinfo.com 

For more information, please contact:
Nicola Koronka
Hotwire
+44 (0) 20 7608 4673
levelfour 'at' hotwirepr.com