First Data provides electronic commerce and payment solutions for businesses and consumers worldwide, serving 4.1 million merchant locations, 1,500 card issuers and millions of consumers.
Gesellschaft fur Zahlungssysteme (GZS) provides card issuing and acquiring processing as well as cross-border debit and fraud management solutions to its banking clients. Easycash, a fully-owned subsidiary of GZS, delivers network service provider and ebusiness services.
At present, GZS processes 982 million transactions per year and provides outsourced processing services for 8.5 million German and Swiss credit cards. Furthermore, GZS provides merchant processing services for its clients serving more than 300,000 merchants.
David Yates, president of Europe, Middle East and Africa at First Data International, said, This acquisition is a major step for First Data, and demonstrates our commitment to the German market. We are convinced that we will bring real value to GZS clients by offering a broad range of electronic processing and support services.
First Data expects the acquisition to complement its expansion into Greece during 2004, and into Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Serbia and Montenegro, Russia, Hungary and the Nordic region in 2005.
