TSYS Forms Managed-Services Joint Venture with Dimension Data

COLUMBUS, Ga.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TSYS (NYSE: TSS), one of the world’s largest payment-services providers, today announced a joint-venture agreement with Merchants, a customer-contact company, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data, to deliver a comprehensive range of managed services to financial institutions across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“Because of their excellent reputation and dedication to quality, Merchants is an ideal partner to join our global strategy of offering ‘best-shoring’ and ‘right-shoring’ choices to our clients.”

The joint venture combines the call-center capabilities of Merchants with TSYS’ special business unit known as TSYS Managed Services, both of which specialize in customer-servicing operations, including back-office, cross-selling and up-selling activities for financial institutions engaged in card issuing and merchant acquiring. The companies have agreed that financial terms of the joint venture will not be disclosed.

The new venture will be called TSYS Managed Services EMEA, and includes existing Merchants centers that comprise more than 200 seats in Milton Keynes, England, near London, and Barneveld, The Netherlands, near Amsterdam. The joint venture is expected to add future centers in other countries throughout Europe and in South Africa.

“This agreement strengthens our position to deliver managed services with quality in Europe and the broader region,” says David R. Figgat, group executive for TSYS Managed Services. “Because of their excellent reputation and dedication to quality, Merchants is an ideal partner to join our global strategy of offering ‘best-shoring’ and ‘right-shoring’ choices to our clients.”

Adam Foster, General Manager at Merchants, commented, “TSYS and Merchants have been delivering managed services to clients for the past two years. Extending this relationship to a formal partnership is testament to the success of the relationship which has resulted in first class service delivery for TSYS clients. The combined focus of both parties will continue to be the delivery of the highest quality managed services.”

TSYS established TSYS Managed Services in 2005, integrating the company’s contact centers and customer-servicing operations of several subsidiaries and business units into a streamlined division. Since the consolidation, TSYS Managed Services has improved economies of scale and increased the overall scope of services that are available to TSYS clients.

About Merchants

Merchants (merchants.co.uk) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data (www.dimensiondata.com), an IT solutions and services provider headquartered in South Africa. Merchants operates contact centers in Milton Keynes; UK; Barneveld, The Netherlands; and Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. Merchants is a leading customer-contact solutions company with 25 years’ experience in servicing blue-chip clients.

About TSYS

TSYS (tsys.com) is one of the world’s largest payment-services companies, offering a broad range of packaged and outsourced issuer- and acquirer-processing technologies that support consumer-finance, credit, debit and prepaid services for financial institutions and retail companies worldwide. Based in Columbus, Ga., TSYS (NYSE: TSS) is 80-percent held by Synovus (NYSE: SNV), one of FORTUNE magazine’s “Most Admired Companies” and a member of its “100 Best Companies to Work For” Hall of Fame. For more information, contact news@tsys.com.