PR - Discover Financial Teams With Chase Paymentech

Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) and Chase Paymentech today announced the integration of Discover Network card acceptance into Chase Paymentech’s payments network for small- to mid-sized merchants. Chase Paymentech is the world’s largest merchant acquirer, with a customer base of more than 600,000 merchants in almost 1 million locations.

By adding Discover Network card acceptance as part of an integrated payments package, these merchants will now have an easy, cost-effective, all-in-one payment processing solution with the convenience of single-source statements, settlement, and customer service.

Consumers continue to show an increasing preference for non-cash payments, regardless of transaction size and one-third of consumer purchases in the United States are now card-based, with that trend growing every year. Most research indicates merchant acceptance as a key driving element of whether a particular card brand gets primary or secondary wallet share. This agreement helps Discover Network cardholders use their card of choice when shopping at a full range of merchant locations.

"Our relationship with Chase Paymentech represents another tremendous milestone in our strategy to further expand acceptance of Discover Network cards among small- to mid-sized merchants across all industries," said Harit Talwar, executive vice president of Discover Financial Services. "Chase Paymentech’s reach into an extensive customer base further demonstrates our commitment to delivering the integrated processing packages that merchants want."

Chase Paymentech has already integrated Discover Network into the merchant boarding process as the first step towards full integration, and expects to rollout the full processing package to its existing merchant customers starting in early 2008.