Press release

Valista Delivers the First Mobile Payment Platform to Support Content Charging in Open and Walled Gardens Networks

Operators and ISPs Can Gain New Revenue Streams from Selling Content Off-portal

Dublin, Ireland and SAN MATEO, Calif., Sept 26th, 2005 – Valista, the leading provider of collaborative payments and collaborative marketing software, today announced the telecommunications industry’s first dual-model payments and offer management technology for the selling of premium content and services both on-portal and off-portal. The Valista OffersPlus solution enables operators and ISPs to create bundled offers, promotions, discount and loyalty programs and sell content in both walled-garden and open network environments.

In the past, mobile operators have been required to choose either a walled garden (on-portal) or open network (off-portal) approach to selling content and services. With Valista’s OffersPlus technology, operators can benefit from both models. A dual-model approach allows operators and ISPs to sell content within their own network, as well as content outside their network by enabling purchases directly from content providers. This flexible approach gives consumers access to a broader selection of content and allows operators to acquire new revenue streams from selling content outside their network. In addition, content providers can bundle their products and services with other suppliers’ content by using the operator’s infrastructure.

“To date, most mobile operators in the United States have adopted the walled garden approach, by presenting content on their own storefront and managing the pricing, marketing, payment, settlement and customer care,” said Raomal Perera, chief executive officer of Valista. “A walled garden model allows the operator to maintain quality assurance and control over the user experience. However, operators can also draw tremendous benefits from an open network model, which provides numerous distribution channels to content providers and enables consumers to access more content. By offering a technology to support both open networks and walled gardens, we present operators with the best of both worlds.”

America Online, the world’s leader in online interactive services, chose Valista OffersPlus to help support its growing digital services business. Using Valista’s technology, AOL packages its premium products and services in a variety of targeted consumer offerings.

“America Online is focused on providing our members with premium digital services that enhance the value of their online experience,” said Ed Fish, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Premium and Subscription Services, America Online, Inc. “Valista OffersPlus has allowed us to react quickly to the needs of our members by bringing to market relevant service in a variety of license options tailored to their needs.”

“Opening up our network to third-party content providers means that our customers have access to a wide range of content, not just that developed by Orange,” said Ben Hirsch, Director of service enablers and frameworks at Orange. “For m-commerce to gain scale and to flourish, content and service providers must collaborate to provide consumers with an easy solution for purchasing a variety of digital content and services through any mobile device. This approach enables new marketing opportunities and allows consumers to access more interesting content.”

While the Internet left behind its 'walled garden' approach years ago, it still pervades in the mobile arena where the mobile operator confines purchase and consumption of mobile products and services within their own portals. Within this successful model, operators maintain complete control of revenues and profits. However, as mobile networks and devices evolve, a move towards off-portal discovery, payment and consumption of content is emerging. In this distributed ecosystem, the content provider benefits from the operator’s delivery infrastructure and subscriber billing relationships. The operator benefits from driving more activity by leveraging recognized brands and more services. Key to the operators’ success in driving this dual-model strategy is the ability to create and manage collaborative marketing programs with content providers that will drive usage and instil customer loyalty.

Valista OffersPlus™
Valista OffersPlus for wireless, cable, fixed line operators and ISPs is designed to accelerate commerce in premium services (music, games, movie clips, information services) by enabling providers to easily package their products and services in a variety of targeted consumer ‘offers.’ Valista OffersPlus includes configurable time-limited and time-and-event-limited, individual or bundled product offers. OffersPlus manages the end-to-end business process for all participants in the value chain: the merchants, service provider and the consumer. It controls user access and consumption, and manages the automatic charging according to the charge period and recurrence rules and settles with each of the merchants and the service provider involved.

Notes:
For more information, please contact:

Valista®
Email: marketing@valista.com

Reichert Communications
Meghan O’Driscoll
Tel: +1 415 296 5132/ +1 925 785 9192
Email: meghan@reichertcom.com

About Valista.
Valista is the leading provider of multi-channel payments and offer management software for the purchase of premium services over web and mobile channels. The combined subscriber base with access to the Valista product suite exceeds 150 million users with over 2000 merchants utilizing the company’s merchant integration technology. Valista’s products support the entire commerce ecosystem and cover the end-to-end business processes including multi-channel ordering, authentication, payment, settlement, service delivery, and post-purchase care. Key customers: AOL, Vodafone UK, France Telecom's w-HA, Orange and Wanadoo, Tiscali, T-Online and VirginMega.fr (France), NTT DoCoMo, 3 (eight countries) and GTECH. Valista was formed from the merger of Network365 and iPIN in November 2003.

Valista won ‘Best Wireless Application Developer’ at the GSM Association Awards 2004 and has been chosen by both Red Herring and Tornado Insider as one of the Top 100 global companies for 2005.

Valista® and ‘accelerating commerce™’ and ‘new ways to purchase with multiple ways to pay™’ payments software enabling the purchase of premium services™’ are registered trademarks and trademarks of Valista Limited. All other trademarks and registered trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners.

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