North Carolina-based TUSA was founded in 2000 to provide secure money transfer and bill payment services to the Hispanic market in the US. The firm provides money transfer services to 15 countries in Latin America, including Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. The company also offers bill payment services in the US.

The vendor's patented card-based money transfer and bill payment system allows transactions to be initiated primarily through point-of-sale (POS) terminals and Integrated Cash Register Systems (ICR), and can also be initiated through PC, fax or telephone.

The system allows retailers to accept cash at a designated POS location and transfer it to any of the 13,000 money transfer locations and/or more than 5000 billers connected to the system. Transfers can be picked up in cash, deposited to a bank account, or loaded to a stored value card.

Although the money transfer service is currently focused on the US and Latin America market, Euronet says it plans to expand it to other countries. The company will operate under the name Euronet Payments and Remittance and will be part of Euronet's prepaid processing unit.

Michael Brown, Euronet chairman and CEO, says the fund transfer service "fits with our business of transaction processing and has recurring transaction-based revenue just like our EFT and pre-paid businesses".

"Moreover, TUSA's simple, convenient card-based product can easily be rolled out to many of our 15,000 retail locations in the US, enabling retailers to offer the money transfer and bill payment products for the first time alongside our pre-paid products," he adds.

News of the acquisition comes as Euronet reports second quarter revenue of $132.2 million, up from $87 million during the same period in 2004.

But net income was down to $3.9 million, compared to $4.4 million last year. Euronet says the drop was mainly due to a foreign currency exchange translation loss.