Lund's appointment adds extensive industry experience to Level Four Americas as the company enters an exciting growth period having signed leading North American and Canadian banking customers. To better support its growing customer base and the changes that are affecting banks' ATM networks in North America and Canada, Level Four Americas has also moved its headquarters from Miami to Charlotte, the second largest banking headquarters in the United States after New York City.

A key challenge affecting ATM deployers in North America and Canada is IBM's withdrawal of support for OS/2, the long-reigning and favored operating system for ATMs. Dove Consulting projects that 63 per cent of banks in the US will migrate from OS/2 to Windows by 2008, highlighting that the US is following the worldwide trend to migrate ATM networks to the Windows platform. Banks must ensure a seamless transition to Windows and be able to fully exploit the untapped potential that open standards offers to develop and deploy new ATM content and functionality to customers. An end-to-end, automated testing solution is essential for ATM applications prior to deployment and an advanced monitoring solution will ensure network uptime once deployed.

As President, Lund is responsible for executing the company strategy - becoming the market leader in delivering open standards-based ATM software by adding top tier financial institutions to Level Four's growing customer base. Lund brings in excess of 20 years of international sales, marketing and general management experience in the ATM, POS and EFT industries. Lund was previously VP of Worldwide Sales at Nexus Software where he was instrumental in the creation and delivery of the first commercially available XFS middleware product and managed its direct and indirect global delivery channel.

Ian Kerr, CEO of parent company Level Four Software, said: "A senior hire of Steve's caliber will be instrumental in ensuring Level Four Americas' success i in helping banks with their ATM network migration to Windows and bringing innovative services and functionality to customers. Moving our headquarters to Charlotte shows our commitment to making Level Four Americas a leading player in the ATM marketplace and will enable us to build a support infrastructure to continue to deliver optimum service to our customers."

Level Four Americas has successfully delivered open standard-based ATM solutions at a number of leading banks in North America and Canada and has a strong pipeline for its BRIDGE:test and BRIDGE:control offerings. Both solutions are part of Level Four's BRIDGE, an integrated suite of open ATM software products that has been developed to address the needs of ATM deployers seeking to maximise their investment in the ATM channel. Level Four also partners with leading, global players in the ATM marketplace including ACI Worldwide and Visa International as well as being active members of industry initiatives including ATMIA.