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December 15, 2004

LEVEL FOUR SOFTWARE PARTNERS WITH ABSOLUTE SYSTEMS TO BRING OPEN STANDARDS TO THE ATM CHANNEL

Innovative open standards software company signs co-marketing agreement with Level Four Software

London, 15 December 2004 – Level Four Software, the leading provider of ATM and POS test and development software today announced a partnership and co-marketing agreement with Absolute Systems, a South African provider of open architecture ATM software applications. Absolute Systems is recognised in the industry for the strength of its XFS-based* software. This partnership reinforces Level Four’s commitment to open standards as the future for ATM and banking infrastructure. Existing and potential customers will benefit, as two innovative technology companies come together to offer future-proof solutions, easily adaptable to new trends and industry mandates.

Level Four will use Absolute Systems’ core product offering AbsoluteINTERACT, in demonstrations of its XFS extension module in its EMEA sales activity, and its expanding Americas business. The XFS extension, which is part of Level Four’s ATM Channel Development Suite, enables the simulation and full automated desktop testing of an XFS-based ATM environment and the interaction between hardware, software and the host system. The introduction of automated testing reduces the dependency on time-consuming and expensive manual testing and provides greater control and audit records of test cycles.

“This partnership has developed naturally as we share a common belief that open standards will have a huge impact on the ATM marketplace, and Level Four’s technology fits well with our own XFS-based software,” said David Longe, managing director of Absolute Systems. “Level Four is recognised as the leader in ATM testing tools. It is important to us to work alongside the most innovative technology companies in retail banking, so we are pleased to formalise the partnership with Level Four.”

Level Four and Absolute Systems both have ambitious growth strategies and the co-marketing agreement will enable both companies to benefit from the association with each other and to build on international relationships and reputations. Absolute Systems is well established in South Africa and its AbsoluteINTERACT product is internationally recognised for its flexibility and stability. Level Four has already achieved significant success in the UK, Europe and the Middle East, and it sees Africa, and South Africa in particular as a key market for its products.

Martin Macmillan, CEO at Level Four Software said: “An increasing number of leading banks are adopting open standards and in particular the XFS standard. XFS is opening up the market for multi-vendor ATM applications and companies like Absolute Systems are leading the way. Our partnership with Absolute Systems will benefit both companies as we look to progress the adoption of open standard solutions across EMEA and the Americas.”

Level Four’s XFS extension enables complete end-to-end testing initiated from the desktop through the XFS application program interface to test the live software, using simulated hardware and peripherals. It provides the benefits of having a “virtual” ATM for developing and testing ATM applications with the latest generation of ATM software architectures from leading ATM vendors and independent software providers such as Absolute Systems. Level Four has already implemented its XFS extension at Rabobank in The Netherlands for testing the bank’s proprietary ATM application that sits alongside Wincor Nixdorf’s ProTopas ATM software, running on NCR and Wincor hardware.

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Note to editor

* XFS - The open software layer XFS evolved from a Banking Solutions Vendor Council initiated by Microsoft in 1991. The result was referred to as Windows Open System Architecture/Extensions for Financial Services (WOSA/XFS). The aim was to provide multi-hardware support, without having to change application programming specific to hardware features. Since 1998 the standard has been adopted and developed by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), and is now referred to as XFS.

About Absolute Systems

Since 1993, Absolute Systems has been working closely with financial institutions and ATM manufacturers focusing on software development and integration for retail banking systems.

Today, Absolute Systems provides innovative software products to address the complex requirements of customer contact channels in retail banks including ATM's, kiosks and branch delivery systems. The Company's primary offering is the AbsoluteINTERACT self-service and branch teller development suite. The product is XFS and EMV compliant and facilitates value added services such as couponing, advertising and ticketing.

Absolute Systems' products have been successfully deployed at various blue-chip financial institutions. The company has forged partnerships with some of the most prominent vendors in this industry including Microsoft and IBM.

About Level Four

Level Four’s integrated BRIDGE suite of open ATM software products have been developed to address the needs of ATM deployers seeking to maximise their investment in the ATM channel. BRIDGE 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. As a true holistic offering, BRIDGE recognises the needs of ATM deployers in the areas of installation, testing and monitoring as well as run-time ATM software.

Since 1995, Level Four has built an impressive global customer base of banks and payments processors including, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, National Bank of Dubai, Rabobank, LINK and Standard Bank of South Africa. Headquartered in Dunfermline, Scotland, Level Four also has offices in Dubai and Charlotte NC.


For further information contact:

Martin Macmillan
Level Four Software Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 1383 720 118

E-mail: martin@levelfour.com

Hotwire PR
Nicola Truman / Alexia Ward
+44 (0) 20 7608 2500
E-mail: levelfour@hotwirepr.com