Under the terms of the agreement, Global Payments will license Hypercom's SmartPayments Server and Client software products as key technology components of its host electronic transaction processing platform. Financial details were not disclosed.

Hypercom SmartPayments will facilitate Global Payments' ability to expand quickly in several key markets by providing an infrastructure and total solution that supports retail multi-lane, mobile commerce, IP terminals, an e-commerce virtual terminal solution for card not present, and card present transactions including debit. Finally, Hypercom SmartPayments provides the ability to support integrated plug-ins for Microsoft's Retail Management System (RMS) and Intuit's QuickBooks accounting packages.

"Hypercom's best-of-breed SmartPayments solution adds to our world-class transaction processing platform, expands our reach, and gives our merchants a robust, high speed, high security IP, dial & Web-based point-of-sale (POS) technology to simplify transaction delivery," said Michael Reidenbach, Chief Information Officer, Global Payments Inc.

"The combination of SmartPayments Server and SmartPayments Client gives merchants the ability to easily process payments as a PC-based, stand-beside solution or integrated into the merchants' POS inventory control system," said Lisa Shipley, Managing Director, Hypercom North America. "Global Payments' selection of our SmartPayments product set is a strong endorsement of our company and our products."

Hypercom's SmartPayments Solution was designed from the ground up with next generation technology "XML Web Services" providing a secure platform to easily integrate payment processing with business critical processes with ubiquitous client side applications and devices. The technology simplifies the installation and integration with the in-store merchant infrastructure and delivers "large store functionality" into mid-size business environments, enabling secure centralized transaction processing, easier administration and management at a lower total cost of ownership.

The SmartPayments Solution suite is an electronic payment processing solution for PC-based cash registers and consists of SmartPayments Client (SPC) and SmartPayments Server (SPS). The SPC runs on PCs and serves as conduit between PIN-Pads and multilane terminals and the SPS. The SPS can run as a low end in-store controller, at corporate headquarters or in a datacenter as a payment gateway. SPS has a built-in web browser based virtual terminal for end user and merchant management console for ISO/resellers.