MasterCard Buys Orbiscom

MasterCard (Purchase, N.Y.) has acquired Dublin-based payments solutions provide Orbiscom for approximately $100 million, a portion of which is contingent upon the future performance of Orbiscom's business.

The acquisition builds on the companies' existing partnership that created MasterCard inControl, a platform featuring authorization, transaction routing and alert controls designed to assist financial institutions in creating new and enhanced payment offerings. In 2008, Royal Bank of Scotland became the first financial institution to implement MasterCard inControl for its commercial card customers.

With MasterCard inControl, issuers can quickly and efficiently introduce card programs tailored to the specific needs of their consumer and corporate cardholders and leverage features, including:

Enhanced authorization controls that direct how, when and where payment cards may be used.

Intelligent routing capabilities that enable a transaction to be routed to different funding sources depending on the transaction characteristics.

Robust alert functionality providing personalized real-time communication on transaction activities.

A limited-use number feature that allows authorization, spending limits and usability controls to be set on a transaction basis, providing enhanced levels of security, control, data capture and traceability on every purchase.