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First Data Corp., a glob­al lead­er in elec­tron­ic commerce and pay­ment services, has complet­ed the sale of the assets of its subsi­diary, IRS Intel­li­gent Risk Manage­ment Solu­tions GmbH (“IRS GmbH”), to the newly found­ed IRIS Analyt­ics GmbH, under the terms of a manage­ment buyout and with effect from 1 August 2007. The sale will enable First Data to focus on its core busi­ness while secur­ing cont­inu­ing access to the IRIS fraud preven­tion system. The employ­ees of IRS GmbH trans­fer to IRIS Analyt­ics GmbH.

First Data acquired IRS GmbH as part of its 2005 acqui­si­tion of GZS Gesellschaft für Zahlungssys­teme mbH. In coop­er­a­tion with Inform GmbH, IRS GmbH had a success­ful track record in the sale of soft­ware licences and main­te­nance services for the IRIS fraud preven­tion system. IRS GmbH also provid­ed consult­ing services and devel­oped real-time fraud preven­tion solu­tions for multi­ple Euro­pean banks.

Through this tran­s­ac­tion, the fraud preven­tion skills and client rela­tion­ships built by IRS GmbH are trans­ferred to IRIS Analyt­ics GmbH. The Manag­ing Direc­tors of IRIS Analyt­ics GmbH - Hanns-Michael Hepp and Niko­laus D. Bayer - were previ­ous­ly managers of IRS GmbH.

In connec­tion with the tran­s­ac­tion, First Data will - together with IRIS Analyt­ics GmbH - cont­in­ue to use the IRIS fraud preven­tion soft­ware, which remains a key compo­nent in the fraud preven­tion services offered to First Data clients. More than 100 million accounts in Europe are protect­ed against fraud using IRIS tech­nol­o­gy today and the IRIS team is committ­ed to ensur­ing that clients remain a step ahead of the fraud­sters.