The internet banking solution will be offered to personal and business customers later this year and is being delivered in partnership with Sandstone Technology, a leading developer and integrator of specialised software, services and solutions for the financial services market.

Sandstone will be delivering full internet banking functionality for the new system through the implementation of its industry-leading Direct Banking platform, BankLink. An extension of Alaric's Authentic authorisation, switching and ATM management system already implemented at Cumberland Building Society will interface with both BankLink and Cumberland Building Society's host system. This will provide a 24x7 source of information for the system, including continuous real-time transaction and balance data availability, in addition to authorisation of online transaction requests. The new system is due to go live in late 2007, following pilot testing.

"Our new internet banking service will enable our current account customers to securely view and manage their accounts online 24-hours a day, seven days a week," commented John Kidd, Finance Director and Secretary, Cumberland Building Society. "The solution offered by Alaric and Sandstone delivers the flexibility, speed and world-class security to ensure a robust, reliable and convenient service for customers."

"We are delighted to be strengthening our relationship with Cumberland Building Society and extending our existing service offering for this key solution," added Steve Lomax, Director of Sales Marketing for Alaric International. "Authentic offers a proven, high performance and versatile platform to support the delivery of internet banking capabilities to banking customers. To be implementing such a key project in partnership with Sandstone is an exciting opportunity for us."

Authentic is Alaric International's highly configurable, scaleable credit, debit and charge card authorisation, payment gateway and switching solution. The Authentic system enables easy integration of existing payment systems with new delivery channels via its simple point-and-click configurable mapping technology and transparent business logic.