Key Dates

February 27
Order deadline for Visa's Where Would You Go sweepstakes promotional materials.

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Quick Fact
Late fees on credit cards increased nearly 6% during 2005 to more than $34 with $39 emerging as the most common fee. Over the past five years late payment fees have jumped by more than 27%. However, the real pain in making a late payment is not the fee, but the higher interest rate that most top issuers assess - usually around 30%. This is why the recently released "Citibank Simplicity MasterCard," which promotes no late fees, is a bit of joke. Citibank's interest rate charged to delinquent and risky cardholders is now at a staggering 31.24%.

- cardweb.com

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Client Corner
Congratulations to Trivantage Community Federal Credit Union in Huntington, West Virginia! They kicked-off the new year right with the opening of a branch on January 4, 2006. The new branch is a full-service facility and is the second branch for Trivantage.

David Becker

Save the Date - April 10, 2006

OneBridge will be hosting a reception on the evening of Monday, April 10, 2006 at the Bellagio Resort and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Please join us for drinks & hors d'oeuvres.
In attendance from OneBridge will be:

David Becker, CEO
Bill Crouch, Director of Sales
Susie Golden-Bishop, Sr. Client Service Manager
Leslie Kern, Marketing Associate

All clients attending the Open Solutions conference are welcome to attend this event and will be receiving a formal invitation in the next few weeks.

Card Smarts
Tips and tidbits to help you get the most out of your card programs.

Contact Bill Crouch at 317-275-5810 for information about how OneBridge can help you
measure and enhance your card programs.

Utilze Free Visa Promotional Materials to Help Market Your Programs

Where can you find promotional programs that will:

1. Help you increase usage and raise awareness of credit and signature debit cards?
2. Require you to do minimal work as they are already designed from concept, to artwork, to content?
3. Use television, radio, and print channels to market national campaigns?
4. Offer incredible prizes to your cardholders including cash, vacations, and merchandise?
5. Provide your institution with marketing materials at no cost?

If you answered Visa, then you are right.

Visa offers many promotional programs every year to encourage your cardholders to use their Visa debit and credit cards. These programs fall into many different categories. Some promote certain kinds of payments, like automatic bill pay or small payments; others are tied to sports, like the NFL or NASCAR; and others have to do with events, like the Olympic Games or new movies.

With most of these programs, every Visa cardholder is automatically entered when they use their card, regardless of whether your institution promotes the program. However, you can raise awareness and help ensure that cardholders understand the program by utilizing the marketing materials Visa offers - for example, put posters in your branch, use statement stuffers, and put a message on your website. And, best of all, through OneBridge's relationship with Visa, you have access to all of these promotional materials for free.

To take advantage of these opportunities, just have your marketing coordinator fill out the order form you receive from OneBridge at the beginning of a promotion. We will be sending you Visa's finalized calendar in the next few weeks with dates and details for 2006 programs.

Rockland FCU Cardholder Wins in Visa's Join the Journey Sweepstakes

A Visa cardholder from Rockland Federal Credit Union in Rockland, MA was a first prize winner in Visa's Join the Journey sweepstakes!

This promotion was tied to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. Cardholders were entered in the sweepstakes when they made Visa purchases from August 1 through September 30, 2005. Some of the prizes included a trip for four to the Olympic games, a 42" plasma television, and Visa Gift cards.

Name Matching:
Defending Against Skimming and Counterfeit Cards

OneBridge is happy to introduce Name Matching, a new service designed to assist clients in minimizing losses associated with skimming and counterfeit cards. It provides another layer of defense in the fight against fraud.

Name Matching works by comparing the name passed in the Track 1 data on authorization requests with the name held on file at OneBridge. If a discrepancy is discovered, we can use that information and decline the authorization - potentially preventing a fraudulent transaction from occurring.

Name Matching will work only for those transactions that pass Track 1 data. Therefore, POS terminals that do not pass Track 1 data, as well as mail, telephone, and Internet orders are not eligible for Name Matching.

Because Name Matching has a direct effect on approving and declining transactions, we recommend a one to two month monitoring period before using the service to make decisions. During this monitoring period, we will record instances where a name was mismatched, but we will not act on it. This enables you to evaluate any discrepancies and make updates to the cardholder names in the account record without inconveniencing your cardholders.

Once we have reached a point where both you and OneBridge are confident with the names you have provided in the account record, we will turn on the full Name Matching service and will begin declining authorization requests that do not match.

Name Matching, which has been beta testing since the Summer of 2005, will be available to all OneBridge clients by the end of February 2006. For more information about this new fraud service, contact OneBridge Client Service at 800.322.4035 or via email at clientservice@onebridge.com.

Industry Update
Below are interesting stories about the card industry that have made headlines over the last few weeks. Links to the full articles are included below.

To access any Card Forum articles you will need to register with Card Forum. Card Forum is a great tool that provides free access to valuable card information and articles. To register, just follow the directions when you click the link.

• The theft or loss of personal and financial information is the top concern of consumers worldwide, beating out such worries as environmental degradation and terrorism, according to a Visa International survey.
  (click for full article "Data Loss Tops Terrorism as Top Consumer Concern Worldwide, Visa Finds")
  - Card Forum

• The once-obscure topic of interchange has generated some 40 merchant lawsuits against MasterCard International, Visa and several of their largest issuers. The disputes pit two powerful, deep-pocketed interest groups against one another, after more than 30 years of working together to build an efficient, ubiquitous and profitable payments industry.
  (click for full article "Merchants Tackle Credit Card Fee Policies")
  - Card Forum

• While less than five percent of U.S. consumers have a health savings account (HSA), Baby Boomers, by contrast, are embracing the product in comparatively high numbers.
  (click for full article"Claritas Insurance Audit Shows Baby Boomers Are Embracing Health Savings Accounts")
  - insurance newsnet