ISTS Worldwide, Inc. a global end-to-end technology consulting company focused on the retail and payment verticals, announced today its plans to extend its payments frameworks using the Microsoft .NET technology stack and core products, including BizTalk Server and SQL Server.

ISTS Worldwide is a Microsoft Managed Partner for Microsoft’s Worldwide Financial Services and Payments group, providing end to end consulting and outsourced application development and maintenance services. ISTS has over a period of time built extensible frameworks around core payments which include:

1. EFT Switching

2. Card Issuance and Management

3. Mobile payment

The ISTS switching framework accepts credit, debit (including EMV), ACH and prepaid cards. Authorization, activation, redemption, balance enquiry and other core functionality is also provided. The switch comes with easy management and maintenance screens and supports ISO 8583 and XML over HTTP message formats.

The Card Issuance and Management framework is built using the Microsoft .NET framework and has authorization, posting, printing and settlement engines and also IVR integration capabilities for customer support. It takes advantage of the Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation to manage running configurations and transport protocol extendibility. This platform currently supports the prepaid instrument but is extendible to traditional credit/debit instruments as well.

The ISTS mobile framework allows a cell phone user to authenticate a payment card purchase. This platform is being developed in Windows Mobile 6 and the .NET framework. The framework provides interfaces to extend it to support bill payment, P2Pfund transfers and fund loading for prepaid.

“Extending our frameworks to the Microsoft stack was a logical progression for ISTS. We are increasingly seeing a need within our large and small customers to look for a Microsoft solution across the payment value chain. These three solution sets address key processing components of consumer payments from multiple retail touch points and will be a key step towards our vision of being able to provide an uniform and extendible platform for consumer transactions – payments as well as non-payments which are key in shaping a positive retail experience,” said Mustafa Shehabi, Sr. VP Sales & Marketing at ISTS Worldwide, Inc.

“Now more than ever, organizations are looking to increase payment processing efficiency to reduce costs, but deliver an enhanced payment experience to their customers,” said Colin Kerr Industry Manager, Payments & Core Banking, Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft. “The solutions built by ISTS using the Microsoft technology stack offer effective data management and integration combined with a sophisticated user experience that clients expect.”

About ISTS Worldwide – www.istsinc.com

ISTS Worldwide provides end to end technology services in the form of architecture services, custom application development, integration, testing and support services by leveraging complementary enablers of People, Process, Technology, Global Delivery Capabilities and domain expertise in the Retail and Payment technology verticals. ISTS enables its customers to address the challenges thrown about by the confluence of multi-channel retail integration initiatives and the need to accept traditional and alternative payments.