PayPoint, the UK’s leading bill and pre-payments network, and allpay.net, the UK’s leading bill payment and collections specialist, have agreed a new five year contract with immediate effect.

This new agreement will see PayPoint become allpay.net’s sole convenience retail network partner and will be offered by allpay.net alongside the Post Office network for over-the-counter payments.  allpay.net, which is primarily focused in the housing and local government sectors, will honour its existing client commitments to other retail convenience payment networks but only PayPoint will be offered to new clients in the future.

Mark Astbury, PayPoint’s Sales and Marketing Director commented: “We are pleased to have worked together to agree new commercial terms for the benefit of both parties. The PayPoint brand and its high consumer awareness were shown to be an essential part of allpay.net’s offer. We look forward to offering allpay.net clients the best retail based payment collection service in the market.”

Tony Killeen, allpay.net’s Managing Director said: “We are delighted to once again be working with PayPoint. allpay.net has always been committed to offering its clients high performance best value bill payment and collection solutions. This includes ensuring our clients’ end-user customers have superior choice and convenience when making payments, whether they choose to pay at a convenience retail outlet or Post Office branch, over the Internet, Direct Debit, or even digital television. It will always be our policy to continually evaluate all our payment channels and partners to ensure we are always delivering the very best in the market.”

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PayPoint Enquiries:
PayPoint Press Office 
020 7100 9999
paypoint@mischiefpr.com

Notes to Editors
PayPoint is the leading cash and internet payments company in the UK and Ireland, handling in excess of £5 billion in over 400 million transactions annually for more than 5,000 clients and merchants. The company operates with several significant payment streams:

• The PayPoint branded retail network numbers over 18,500 terminals located in local shops (including Co-op, Spar, Costcutter, Sainsburys Local, One Stop, Londis and thousands of independents) in all parts of the UK and Ireland. Terminals handle gas and electricity meter prepayments, cash bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, London Congestion Charges, BBC TV licences and a wide variety of other payment types for all of the leading utilities, telecommunications suppliers and many consumer service companies. This network is used by consumers, free of charge, over 7 million times a week. The network has 97.3% population cover on a 1 mile urban or 5 miles rural measure;
• Additional multiple retailer connections into the electronic till systems of nearly 4,000 outlets including BP, Somerfield and Superdrug for mobile top-ups and selected payments from the PayPoint range;
• The PayPoint ATM network has 1,979 'LINK' branded machines across the UK, also typically in convenience stores;
• PayPoint Internet Payment Services (PPIPS), trading as Metacharge and SECPay, provides secure credit and debit card payments for over 4,000 web merchants linking into all the major UK acquiring banks; and
• PayPoint International has recently acquired a Romanian mobile top-up operator to which a bill payment service will be added, emulating the UK branded retail network. PayPoint International also operates Irish bill payment and top-up services.

PayPoint floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2004. The company's market capitalisation at 8 October 2007 was £379 million. PayPoint has been awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise and is widely recognised for its leadership in prepayment systems, smart technology and consumer service.

allpay.net Enquiries
Nigel Parker and Dulcie Mclerie
01494 434434
nigelp@strategicpr.net / dulciem@strategicpr.net

About allpay.net
With over 750 clients and over 1700 payment schemes in operation, allpay.net is the UK’s leading end-to-end 24/7 payment and revenue collection service provider for the public and private sectors.

Plenty of conveniently located and well known outlets now accept payments on allpay.net’s electronic swipecard network with other payment methods including the Internet, interactive TV, telephone (IVR), Direct Debit and barcoding. For more information visit www.allpay.net