CardPartner Works New Year’s Eve to Sign Five Nonprofits to Affinity Credit Card Deals

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CardPartner (www.cardpartner.com) signed five nonprofits to Visa affinity credit card programs on New Year’s Eve, hot on the heels of signing 12 other groups during Christmas week and despite weakness in the credit card sector.

“They appreciate CardPartner’s customizable marketing tools, the fact that we never seek access to membership lists, and of course that CardPartner helps them generate incremental revenue.”

While the world was popping champagne corks, CardPartner was welcoming:

• Sea Shepherd, an international marine wildlife conservation group whose Whale Wars television program is one of this season’s hottest shows on cable’s Animal Planet channel
• Amphibian Ark, a joint effort by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, and the Amphibian Specialist Group to ensure survival of amphibians
• The Foundation for the Pure Spanish Horse, an Albuquerque-based group dedicated to fostering an appreciation of the Andalusian horse throughout the United States and Canada
• The German American National Congress, also known as DANK (Deutsch Amerikanischer National Kongress), the nation’s largest organization of Americans of German descent, with 30 chapters and over 100 associated societies coast-to-coast
• The Merck Forest and Farmland Center, a Vermont group that teaches the benefits of innovative, sustainable management of forest and farmland

More than 115 other groups have joined CardPartner in the last ten months. The company attributes this rapid growth to its focus on helping small nonprofits, membership groups and others underserved by traditional credit card companies.

“Nonprofits like CardPartner’s human scale,” says senior director Mark Levitt, formerly an executive with affinity credit card giant MBNA. “They appreciate CardPartner’s customizable marketing tools, the fact that we never seek access to membership lists, and of course that CardPartner helps them generate incremental revenue.”

CardPartner affinity credit cards are issued by UMB Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: UMBF), one of the largest independent banks in the United States. In 2008, Smart Money placed UMB Financial on its honor roll and called the company “the envy of the banking industry,” and American Banker named UMB Chairman and CEO “Community Banker of the Year.”

About CardPartner

CardPartner is an online company that helps small and mid-sized U.S.-based nonprofits and membership groups create and offer custom Visa credit card programs. CardPartner connects groups with free online tools to design and market their own branded cards and pays groups a one-time fee for every activated card, plus a portion of the ongoing charge volume. CardPartner is a unit of the privately held Serverside Group, a technology provider to many of the world’s leading banks. For more information about CardPartner, visit www.cardpartner.com.

About UMB

UMB Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: UMBF) is a financial services holding company headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., offering complete banking, asset management, health spending solutions and related financial services to both individual and business customers nationwide. Its banking subsidiaries own and operate 136 banking centers throughout Missouri, Illinois, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Arizona. Subsidiaries of the holding company and the lead bank, UMB Bank, n.a., include an investment services group based in Milwaukee, Wis., single-purpose companies that deal with brokerage services and insurance, and registered investment advisors for proprietary mutual funds.