On-Demand Service Enables Low-Volume Users to Benefit from Secure, Low-Cost and Feature-Rich SWIFT Access

Dubai – UAE - May 23, 2010 – EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance and payments solutions and services, has launched en.PaymentSafe, a new service which supports entry-level connectivity to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network.
 
en.PaymentSafe enables low-volume users to process their financial messages seamlessly and at low cost. It leverages existing EastNets products that facilitate SWIFT Message creation, verification, authorization and approval; Anti-Money Laundering checks; Reporting; Bank Identifier Codes (BIC) and International Bank Account Number (IBAN) Validation. The solution runs on the EastNets Service Bureau (en.Service Bureau), a highly reliable managed service that connects more than 250 financial institutions to the SWIFT Network.

“en.PaymentSafe offers financial institutions, companies, funds distributors, investment managers and fund transfer agents low cost access to use  the SWIFT messaging service. Organizations now have a convenient way to join the SWIFT community by entrusting their SWIFT and Anti-Money Laundering operations to our service run by seasoned and trusted specialized professionals,” said Hazem Mulhim, CEO, EastNets.

The new service is managed and maintained by a team of expert SWIFT-certified engineers. Customers enrolled for en.PaymentSafe only need a standard internet browser to access the service. en.PaymentSafe’s ‘on-demand’ model combines flexible, easy and fast deployment with low cost of ownership to make joining SWIFT easy.

EastNets has over 25 years of experience in providing financial crime and regulatory protection, and enhancing payment processes to facilitate transparency, resiliency and enterprise control. Its payment solutions and services are used by more than 1,000 customers in 120 countries.

Ernst & Young Validates the Security, Availability and Reliability of its SWIFT Service Bureau

May 11, 2010

EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance and payments solutions, announced today that it has achieved the SAS 70 Type II Certification, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) stringent Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 Type II Audit on Service Organizations. The certification was awarded to EastNets after a rigorous testing period of its SWIFT Service Bureau to determine the operating effectiveness of controls used to manage the SWIFT Alliance environment in accordance with SAS 70 requirements.

“The favorable results of the SAS 70 audit provide strong third-party validation and proves the ability of EastNets to offer secure and reliable SWIFT hosting services,” said Hazem Mulhim, CEO of EastNets. “With the SAS 70 certification, we assure our customers and the SWIFT community that we shall maintain and deliver high levels of operational and service excellence and performance.”

A SAS 70 Audit involves a thorough assessment of the control objectives and control activities of organizations and determines whether the proper controls and safeguards are in place to host or process customer data. Results from the audit, conducted by Ernst & Young, showed that the company met the five Control Objectives of restricted logical access to system resources.

EastNets’ en.Service Bureau is used today by over 250 financial institutions and corporates, providing gateway connectivity, fully managed hosting, shared alliance access server, as well as add-on services for disaster recovery, FileAct service, reconciliation, anti-money laundering, SWIFT reporting and duplicate message detection management.

Company Meets SWIFT’s Stringent Shared Infrastructure Requirements

Dubai, UAE - May 02, 2010 - EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance and payments solutions, announced today that its Service Bureau has been awarded the Operational Assurance label from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), an international cooperative society which facilitates secure financial messaging services.
 
SWIFT’s Operational Assurance labeling encourages and rewards providers such as EastNets that meet high standards of resiliency and security. The practice also enables users to identify top providers and confirm their ability to operate within strict quality parameters. The Operational Assurance label authorizes EastNets to implement, integrate and upgrade services under the SWIFT network throughout 2010. SWIFT subjected the company to thorough background checks on compliance with key operational requirements covering Availability, Security and Access Control, Telecommunications, and Integrity and Change Management prior to awarding the label.

“The Operational Assurance label validates the exceptional ability of our infrastructure to harmonize with SWIFT’s network,” said Hazem Mulhim, CEO of EastNets. “EastNets intends to constantly push our technologies and adopt best practices to ensure that our operations fully align with SWIFT’s quality goals as well as the evolving needs of financial institutions and corporates.”

The company provides connectivity to SWIFT and SWIFT messaging services for financial institutions either directly or through its EastNets Service Bureau. The company’s en.Service Bureau is used today by over 250 financial institutions and corporates, providing gateway connectivity, fully managed hosting, shared alliance access server, as well as add-on services for disaster recovery, FileAct service, reconciliation, anti-money laundering, SWIFT reporting and duplicate message detection management.

Certification Validates EastNets Capability to Perform Implementation, Integration and Upgrade Services for SWIFT Products

Dubai, UAE – 05 April 2010 - EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance and payments solutions, announced today that it has again been awarded the SwiftReady Services label after successfully passing the renewal criteria for 2010. The certification validates EastNets’ capability to perform implementation, integration and upgrade services in 2010 for SWIFT products and solutions that include Alliance Access, Alliance Entry, Alliance Starter Set, Alliance RMA, Alliance Gateway, Alliance WebStation, CCI Screenflow over SWIFT, Solutions Integration, Cash Reporting and Funds.

The SWIFTReady certification involves three stages of validation: technical validation wherein SWIFT uses an external provider to execute the technical validation of the products applying for a SWIFTReady application label; functional validation, which consists of a detailed demonstration of the applicant product to SWIFT business experts, who assess compliance; and customer validation, which verifies customer satisfaction regarding the usage of the product.

Hazem Mulhim, CEO, EastNets, said: “The SWIFTReady label reaffirms our continuing thrust to deliver premium-quality solutions and value-added services to our growing portfolio of customers worldwide. With the certification, our customers can have complete confidence in EastNets’ capabilities to provide compliance and payment solutions that have passed the most stringent quality standards.”

EastNets SWIFT-ready solutions value-add SWIFT connectivity plug-ins including: en.Reporting, enabling SWIFTAlliance Access (SAA) users can benefit from one central view to investigate, monitor and report all their FIN and XML traffic within one environment en.Recovery, enabling SAA users to restart operations within minutes after an outage instead of hours; and en.Duplicate Detection, preventing in real time emission of duplicate payments or other FIN messages sent to correspondents,  and EastNets anti-money laundering solutions: en.SafeWatch Filtering, providing real-time blocking and list filtering, supporting all lists including OFAC and PEP; and en.SafeWatch Profiling, providing customer and account monitoring and profiling, risk scoring, peer group analysis, case management and regulatory reporting.

Brian Haughan Appointed as Chief Operations Officer;

Rajeev Agarwal Assumes Role of Chief Financial Officer

Dubai, UAE – March 2, 2010    EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance and payments solutions, announced today that the company has added two key executives to its management team to support its business growth plans. EastNets welcomes Brian Haughan as Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Rajeev Agarwal as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Brian will be responsible for overall business operations and is based in EastNets’ Waterloo, Belgium offices.  He brings over 27 years of professional experience, including 21 years at SWIFT where he was Executive Head of Customer Operations for four years, and  Executive Head of Products for two years.

Rajeev holds more than 19 years of professional and managerial experience and is based in EastNets headquarters in Dubai. He holds a CPA from the U.S., a CGA from Canada, a CISA, and a CA.  Prior to his appointment with EastNets, Mr. Agarwal was CFO at OceanLake Commerce Inc. as well as Vice President of Finance for Dyadem, a QLM & process risk management software company. In addition, he was also a Senior Director of Finance at Workbrain, a workforce management software company.

“We are very pleased to have such high caliber executives as Brian and Rajeev join the company and  lead the operations and finances of our organization and help EastNets to grow revenue and improve profitability, streamline financial activities, strengthen our ability to achieve operational excellence, and develop innovative new products,” said Hazem Mulhim, CEO of EastNets. “We look forward to their contributions towards EastNets’ enhanced performance, specifically their

assistance in the delivery of value to the market and our global customer base with high quality solutions and services to improve transparency, resiliency and financial controls.”

Dubai, UAE – February 2nd, 2010    EastNets, a leading global provider of compliance and payments solutions, announced today that Clearstream Services External Businesses had deployed EastNets’ anti-money laundering solutions as the strategic platform to provide “Software as a Service” (SaaS) compliance solutions to their clients world-wide.

With this new On Demand service powered by EastNets technology, customers of Clearstream Services External Businesses benefit from cost-effective anti-money laundering controls designed to meet regulatory requirements, reduce capital expenditure and streamline efficiencies.   

Clearstream Services External Businesses hosts and operates an entire front and back-office banking environment through an On Demand banking platform, providing clients with a highly secured environment to house their IT infrastructure. With EastNets, Clearstream Services External Businesses expands its services to include watchlist filtering and transaction monitoring capability to detect and report money laundering activity. With no upfront fee, financial institutions can immediately benefit from their choice of services priced and packaged based on volume.

“We are delighted to have selected EastNets’ market leading solutions as the centerpiece and command centre of our anti-money laundering service offering,” said, Michel Rodriguez, External Business Development Director of Clearstream Services. “The company’s long history in compliance and payments, the exceptional quality of its solutions and strong industry expertise made EastNets an obvious choice.”

“As financial institutions strive to control costs and risk, outsourcing operations and business processes become increasingly interesting and appealing,” said Hazem Mulhim, CEO of EastNets. “With Clearstream Services External Businesses’ integration of EastNets’ solutions, financial institutions will have immediate and cost-effective access to world-class anti-money laundering solutions to meet regulatory requirements and mitigate risk.”

As their first common reference, Clearstream Services External Businesses hosts and operates EastNets’ solutions for East West United Bank based Luxembourg.

The EastNets solutions offered on Clearstream Services External Businesses’ On Demand banking platform include en.SafeWatch Filtering, providing real-time blocking and list filtering, supporting all lists including OFAC and PEP; en.SafeWatch Profiling, providing customer and account monitoring and profiling, risk scoring, peer group analysis, case management and regulatory reporting; en.Recovery, enabling SWIFTAlliance users to restart operations within minutes after an outage instead of hours; en.Reporting for FIN and XML traffic monitoring and reporting; and en.Duplicate Detection, preventing in real time emission of duplicate payments or other FIN messages sent to correspondents.

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