First Data Utilities announces Peace Market Solution
    
San Antonio, May 19, 2008 -- First Data Utilities today announced the Peace Market Solution application. Market Solution facilitates interaction between the Peace CIS and transaction hubs in competitive retail energy markets. Proven in the ERCOT market in Texas and the NEMMCO market in Australia, Market Solution is designed to meet the needs of retail energy providers and distribution companies operating in competitive markets.

Data exchange and transaction management have become a complex and expensive activity, particularly for companies operating across multiple markets or in markets with frequently changing transaction standards. Each market or state operates with its own rules and transaction protocols which must be met in order to avoid penalty and provide reliable service in the market. Companies face high costs to integrate and automate interactions between a market, their CIS, and other back-end systems. In addition to the high costs associated, a lack of flexible workflow and automation in market transaction and CIS systems results in high error rates and the need for manual exception handling processes.

Peace Market Solution is a transaction processing framework and rules engine that simplifies integration between competitive markets and the Peace CIS. Market Solution automates the sending and receiving of market transactions and the workflows required to accurately process any action transaction changes within the CIS.

Within Market Solutions, transactions are managed via standard rules and workflows compliant with market rules. The application also allows energy companies to configure custom rules and workflows to support company specific business processes.

Already in production in two markets, Peace Market Solution further builds on the strength of Peace CIS for competitive markets.

About First Data Utilities
First Data Utilities develops the award-winning Peace® utility Customer Information System (CIS) software and provides outsourced utility services. The top-rated Peace CIS software is trusted by major regulated, competitive, and network utilities in 37 markets worldwide. First Data Utilities' latest release, PeaceX, is at the forefront of utility software development with its adoption of 'Smart Screen' usability, Service Oriented Architecture, and business process optimization. First Data has more than 300 utility clients ranging from entrepreneurial new entrant energy retailers to the largest dual-fuel utilities with millions of customers and multiple market operations. For more information, visit www.firstdatautilities.com.

About First Data
First Data Corp. is the global technology leader in information commerce. The company processes transaction data of all kinds, harnesses the power of that data, and delivers innovations in secure infrastructure, intelligence and insight for its customers. With operations in 37 countries, First Data serves over 5.4 million merchant locations, 2,000 card issuers and their customers. It powers the global economy by making it easy, fast and secure for people and businesses around the world to buy goods and services using virtually any form of payment. The company's portfolio of services and solutions includes merchant transaction processing services; credit, debit, private-label, gift, payroll and other prepaid card offerings; fraud protection and authentication solutions; receivables management solutions; electronic check acceptance services through TeleCheck; as well as Internet commerce and mobile payment solutions. The company's STAR Network offers PIN-secured debit acceptance at 2.1 million ATM and retail locations. Through First Data's four "centers of excellence": security, analytics, customer loyalty and mobile payments, we offer data-driven commerce solutions for customers around the globe. For more information, visit www.firstdata.com.

Contacts:

James Braatvedt
First Data Utilities
303 803 8626
james.braatvedt@peace.com

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