Eckoh Technologies Regulatory News (ECK)

Eckoh PLC

("Eckoh")

Contract win with Multinational Financial Services Company

Eckoh (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions, today announces that it has been awarded a three year contract to provide hosted payment services to one of the UK's leading financial services companies ("the Group") who specialise in insurance and operate across international markets.

Eckoh was selected through a competitive tender process in February 2012, the contract was signed in November 2012 and the first service is expected to commence in Q1 2013.

Under the terms of the contract Eckoh will be able to provide services to various departments across the Group and initially three departments have committed to adopting the Eckoh solution. The awarding organisation offers life assurance, general insurance, pensions and, investment products, and has over 7 million UK customers who are supported by the Group's contact centre operations which receive customer support calls and take customer payments. 

Through the contract those customers will now be able to make payments over the phone using both EckohPROTECT and EckohPAY, Eckoh's secure Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards ("PCI DSS") compliant payment services.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented: "I'm delighted to announce this major financial services client win which will see us deploy our whole range of payment services and support these through our own contact centre operation. Our end to end PCI DSS solution continues to drive high levels of interest from customers who are looking to address regulatory pressure as well as respond to growing public demand for more secure payments in contact centres. We also see clear opportunities for broadening this contract over time through the implementation of our speech solutions and we look forward to developing a strong relationship with the company over the coming years."

EckohPROTECT enables callers to make payments over the phone with the assistance of a contact centre agent without having to share their card details with the agent. EckohPAY is a fully automated service validating the caller against a unique reference number, whilst capturing card details, handling authorisation and settlement in real time. The services will enhance efficiency and increase customer satisfaction by offering the secure payments service 24 hours a day.

Eckoh's own UK based PCI DSS compliant contact centre will deal with any calls that cannot be processed through the automated services to ensure that no card data is passed into the company's environment, and in so doing significantly reduce the scope of their PCI compliance exercise.

- Ends -

For more information, please contact:

Eckoh plc

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer

Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director

www.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300

Buchanan

Jeremy Garcia, Gabriella Clinkard Tel: 020 7466 5000

Singer Capital Markets

Shaun Dobson Tel: 020 3205 7500

About Eckoh plc

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions across voice, web and mobile channels. We are a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider, currently processing over £250 million in card payments annually.

Eckoh's solutions enable payments, transactions and enquiries to be processed without the caller needing to talk to a contact centre agent. This significantly reduces our clients' costs, whilst freeing up their agents to deal with more complex enquiries. Eckoh is the largest provider of such hosted services in the UK.

Our secure and resilient infrastructure has the scalability to handle up to 8,000 calls simultaneously, which means that calls will always be answered no matter how unpredictable the circumstances.

For more information, visit: www.eckoh.com