For TSYS And SpareBank, Norway Is PRIME Territory

When TSYS signed SpareBank 1 to a major PRIME 4 licensing agreement earlier this month, both companies solidified their roles as major players in the Norwegian financial market.

TSYS, the world’s biggest merchant processor, has been active in Norway since 1997, experiencing significant success in the market. SpareBank is among Norway’s largest bank groups, servicing each of the country’s 19 counties, and 352 branches in total. In many ways, it’s a match made in Nordic heaven.

MPD’s David Evans spoke with John Goodale, TSYS’s senior director of business expansion, and Kjell Kleveland, Program Manager at SpareBank, to discuss the partnership, Norway’s unique issuing market and how the relationship between the two Norwegian powerhouses developed.

SpareBank will license with TSYS’s PRIME 4 card management system, allowing it to process a variety of MasterCard and Visa cards. Goodale describe the PRIME system as a solution capable of providing both issuing and acquiring capabilities for clients, and emphasizes that while TSYS is best known for its processing services, PRIME takes advantage of his company’s licensing abilities as well.

Kleveland stressed that the Norwegian market is more about issuing than acquiring, noting that bank-owned net operators control nearly 80 percent of the country’s acquiring market. As such, he feels PRIME is uniquely suited to meet SpareBank’s needs.

To hear more from Evans, Goodale and Kleveland on the PRIME deal, listen to the full audio interview here.