Magex Acquires OPT, Plans Major Stored-Value Expansion in the U.S.

Magex Ltd., a London-based e-commerce and person-to-person transaction processor, has acquired Open Payment Technologies Inc., a provider of stored-value card systems to restaurants, supermarkets, and other merchants. A price was not disclosed. Phoenix-based OPT will become a division of Magex, and Dave Ingwersen, OPT's president, is assuming the title of president of Magex's card services division. With Magex's backing, Ingwersen says OPT will now expand its stored-value programs into the health-care, payroll, insurance-claims, and corporate-incentives markets. Likewise, Magex plans to mine OPT's expertise to develop prepaid card programs in Europe. The acquisition, which hands Magex its first wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, also allows the U.K. company to carve out a larger share of the U.S. stored-value market, which it estimates at $100 billion in value. OPT's platform processes 150 million transactions annually for merchants like Claim Jumper Restaurants, Barbeques Galore, and Books-A-Million. It links 17,000 point-of-sale terminals in the U.S. and Canada and supports check, debit, credit, automated clearing house, and electronic benefits transfer transactions as well as prepaid card payments. The stored-value card types it processes include gift, retail merchandise credit, and loyalty. Magex offers processing for p-to-p transactions, cross-border remittances, stored-value cards, and mobile payments. Its clients include Royal Bank of Scotland, for which it developed a p-to-p payment service, and MasterCard International. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group is a shareholder in Magex.