Many PayPoints open for business throughout the holidays

With the long Christmas and New Year bank holidays almost upon us, the last thing on many peoples’ minds will be running out of gas or electricity at the crucial moment. Thankfully, help is at hand if they do as the majority of PayPoint retailers will be open during the festive period, allowing people up and down the country to top up their meters.

“The best way to ruin the big day is for your gas or electricity to run out half way through cooking the Christmas lunch,” says Peter Brooker of PayPoint. “However, it need not be a total disaster as many of the 22,000 PayPoint retailers will be open for most of the Christmas and New Year period.

“In fact, last year, PayPoint took over 3 million payments on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day¹, and more than 1.5 million of those were for gas or electricity pre-payments – with 330,000 of those on Christmas Day itself.”

Most of the 22,000 PayPoint outlets around the country will be open as normal outside the three bank holidays, with many open for some, if not all, of the three bank holidays as well, enabling people to pre-pay their gas and electricity keys, top up their mobile phones and make other payments with ease.

In addition, because, PayPoints are mostly in local convenience stores, including garage forecourts and newsagents, they are usually open from early morning until late evening.

“With our nationwide network, almost everyone has a handy PayPoint which will be open when other places they might usually use will be closed,” adds Peter Brooker.

“The run up to Christmas is always frantic, so it’s easy to forget to make sure you top up your utility meters ahead of the holiday. But there’s no reason to panic if you do run out – because PayPoint retailers are at the heart of their communities, providing a local service to their customers when no-one else is there for them.”

PayPoint outlets are identified by the distinctive yellow and purple PayPoint logo outside local convenience stores – you can use any of them to make your payments – and if the shop you usually use is closed, you can find another nearby store at http://www.paypoint.com/locator.aspx.

¹ Measurement period from 5.00pm on Christmas Eve to 9.00am on 27 December and from 5.00pm New Year’s Eve to 9.00am on 2 January 2009

- Ends -

Enquiries:

PayPoint Press Office
01707 600356
peterbrooker@paypoint.co.uk

Tom Nutt / Charlotte Pusey
The Communication Group
020 7630 1411
paypoint@thecommunicationgroup.co.uk

Notes to Editors

About PayPoint

PayPoint is the leading cash and internet payments company in the UK, with operations also in Ireland and Romania. It handles over £9.3billion from almost 550 million transactions annually for more than 6,000 clients and merchants. The company operates several businesses:

• The PayPoint branded retail network numbers over 22,600 terminals located in local shops (including Co-op, Spar, McColls, Costcutter, Sainsbury’s Local, One Stop, Londis and thousands of independents) in all parts of the UK and Ireland. The terminals process gas and electricity meter prepayments, cash bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, BBC TV licences and a wide variety of other payment types for most leading utilities, telecommunications suppliers and many consumer service companies;
• An ATM network which has over 2,300 ‘LINK’ branded machines across the UK, typically in convenience stores;
• PayPoint.net, an internet payment service provider, delivers secure online credit and debit card payments for over 5,200 web merchants, linking into all major UK acquiring banks;
• PayPoint Romania, a branded national retail network of over 2,260 terminals located in local shops which process cash bill payments for all the major utilities and mobile top-ups and a further 3,500 terminals that process mobile top-ups only; and
• Collect+, a joint venture with Home Delivery Network Limited, provides a parcel collection and drop off service at PayPoint retailers.

PayPoint floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2004 and the company’s market capitalisation at 27 September was £318 million. PayPoint is widely recognised for its leadership in prepayment systems, smart technology and consumer service.