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Press Kit

Company Name: Emida
  Headquarters: Foothill Ranch, CA
  Incorporation Nevada
  Trading Status: Privately Held
  Employees (Worldwide): 75
  Products: Debisys & Puntoflex Networks
  Markets Served: Global Prepayment and Value Transfer
  Global Presence: 22 Countries
  Annual Payment Volume: Over $500,000,000

 

About Emida

We are a leader in the global prepayment and value transfer market, operating in 22 countries throughout North, Central, South America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. Through our recent merger with Q Comm we support a retail network of more than 21,000 retailers with an annual dollar payment volume in excess of $500,000,000 processing more than 35 million payment transactions.

We enable the domestic and international distribution and value transfer of many types of prepaid products and payment services. Our strategy is to build profitable, robust distribution networks for many prepaid products in targeted operating geographies, and to introduce unique cross-border value products between regions. Our payment processing platforms, provide robust revenue solutions for distributors, retailers, carriers and service providers alike.

 

The Prepaid ISO and Distributor Connection

In North America Emida serves the independent retailer market through independent sales organizations (ISOs) and has developed market-leading programs that enable ISOs to win and retain retail customers. Whether it’s great customer service, ease of set-up, flexibility in POS delivery, efficient administration, settlement and reporting, or delivering on a tailor-made product offering for each retail merchant, Emida gives ISOs the tools to effectively manage their business. With Emida, the ISO owns their retail merchant accounts and can confidently partner with us to serve their customers.

 

Products and Services

Emida believes that we are only as good as the products and services we enable on our platform. We provide prepaid products and payment services only from the best, most innovative providers in the industry and we partner with them to deliver best-of-breed customer service. Our product mix includes prepaid wireless, prepaid calling cards, branded stored value products, lottery, internet, bill payment and money transfer. Some of our partners include:

 

Unique Cross Border Products

As the prepaid market continues its rapid growth, and the number of products and services increases, we believe the key to success is differentiation. Unique prepaid products in retail locations generate consumer interest and loyalty as well as revenue growth. We’ve developed direct connections with carriers and financial institutions to provide cross border value transfer. Our relationships in our targeted geographies provide access to many cross-border products such as wireless direct top up, money transfer, bill payment and others to capture more of the overall prepaid market spend and lock in customer loyalty. Some of our partners include:

 

Leader in Real-time Top Up Solutions

Direct top-up solutions can increase ARPU and carrier cost efficiencies associated with the prepaid replenishment process, as well as improve the prepaid wireless customer experience. At Emida, we provide enabling technology and unique direct top-up solutions for carriers and MVNOs through direct interfaces with carrier billing systems.

 

Technology You can Depend On

Emida’s technology provides a scalable, global distribution, payment and settlement backbone for prepaid products from a variety of providers. Our proprietary transaction processing network and state-of-the-art hardware and software receives message streams from point of sale terminals, partner POS and web interfaces, and processes the incoming requests by connecting with any necessary host or switch and delivering the appropriate response medium: e-pin, activation reply, top up confirmation, balance, etc. Our software supports transactions through a wide variety of POS devices including best of breed POS terminals, mobile phones via SMS, and PC/Web solutions. The system provides a comprehensive set of web service application program interfaces (APIs) for host-to-host integrations.

 

Management

Dennis Andrews, Chief Executive Officer
Andrews brings 31 years experience in the technology industry to Emida, including serving as former chairman and co-founder of eCatalystOne, also a provider of global online payment services, and 21 years with IBM during the initial explosion of the IBM PC business. He has been the president and/or CEO of advanced software companies since 1991, including seven-plus years in Silicon Valley. Andrews most recently served as CEO of Axcelerant, Inc., which was successfully sold to GRIC Communications in 2003. Andrews graduated with honors from Penn State University with a degree in theoretical mathematics. His graduate studies, also in theoretical mathematics, were at Syracuse University and the University of North Carolina.

James R. Wodach, CPA, Chief Financial Officer
Wodach has been Emida since 2001 and has more than 20 years of financial and operational experience. Wodach has raised in excess of $125 million through both public and private financings. From 2000 to 2001, Wodach served in various capacities including chief executive, operating and financial officer, and board member of Vicus.com. Previously he also held the position of senior vice president and CFO for PharmaPrint Inc., a publicly traded pharmaceutical and consumer products company. Wodach received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from California State University, Fullerton. He is also a Certified Public Accountant.

Ron Kraft, Vice President – General Manager North America
Kraft brings 19 years of Sales and Account Management experience in technology and consumer goods industries to Emida. Previously, he served as Senior Account Manager and Vice President of U.S. Sales at Emida. Prior to joining the company in 2005, Kraft served as Director of Account Management at GoRemote where he managed relationships with Fortune 1000 companies primarily focusing on IT deployments to pharmaceutical organizations such as Johnson and Johnson, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squib. Kraft graduated from the University of Redlands with a BA in Communications.

Luis Paz, Vice President LATAM
Paz has over 18 years experience in developing deploying, supporting and commercializing technology products and services. He oversees Emida's operations in Latin America and leads related business development efforts in the region.. Previously, Paz managed Emida's technology blueprint and development organization. Prior to Emida he served as Senior Software Development Director for Starmedia Mobile (now CycleLogic), where he led development of mobile internet enabling platforms and value-added applications for wireless carriers in Latin America. Paz served 11 years in several key technical management positions for Modular Mining Systems, a subsidiary of Komatsu Ltd. (Japan) where he helped the company become the worldwide leader in highly scalable, reliable, 24x7 real-time management information systems for mining and railroad operations. Paz graduated with honors with a B.S. in Systems Engineering and a M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Arizona. He graduated with distinction Thunderbird School of Global Management where he received a MBA.

Steve Gooderham, Vice President International
Steve Gooderham has over 25 years of international experience in technology based companies. He has successfully negotiated, and deployed multi-million-dollar telecommunications projects in Europe the Middle East and North America. As general manager for England-based Microvitec Multimedia, his team developed one of the first video-on-demand systems to be deployed by British Telecom. More recently with SCI and Corsair Communications he has led the deployment, management and support of prepaid systems throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. Since joining Emida three years ago, he has been responsible for managing the company operations in the Caribbean, as well as establishing a 7x24 support team for domestic and international clients.

Charles Callis, Vice President Global Marketing
Callis brings over 20 years of worldwide senior management and executive experience with global technology companies. Prior to Emida, he served as vice president of marketing and business development at Q Comm International. He brings a track record of building innovative product strategies, industry alliances and value-added channel networks both domestically and internationally. Callis served as vice president, worldwide sales and marketing for ClearOne Communications where he built a global partner network of distributors and value-added resellers. Prior to that, Callis held executive positions with Learnframe and Keylabs and served as a founding executive and vice president of worldwide sales and alliances for systems management leader Altiris, Inc. (now Symantec). Over a decade he held numerous executive positions for networking software leader, Novell, including vice president of marketing, vice president of enterprise customers, and managing director Europe, Middle East and Africa. He was a National Resource Center Fellow and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah with BA and MBA degrees.

Fred Schade, Chief Information Officer
Schade brings more than 23 years of experience in IT and software development to Emida. Schade served as CTO for Q Comm where he led the engineering team to turn around its platform into a robust, secure and scalable solution in the prepaid processing industry. Schade also lead Q Comm?s operations department, focusing on controls, scalable processes and a service-focused culture. Prior to Q Comm he served as vice president of research and development and as CTO for MediConnect.net Inc. Schade brings significant experience in process automation, user interface development and technology leadership to building information system that are stable, scalable, secure and flexible for customers. Schade has worked with numerous industry standards committees and is an expert in the medical information privacy and security community. He is the inventor/co-inventor of six technology and business process patents. Schade held director of development positions with educational software developers NetSchools Corp and Waterford Institute. He started his career with IBM as a software engineer and product manager. Schade graduated from BYU with a BS in Computer Science.

Mark Beckner, Chief Technology Officer
A veteran of technology development and deployment for mission critical systems and services, Beckner leads Emida's efforts to ensure that its technology platform meets the ever-increasing service demands of its growing customer base. He has managed large-scale research and development programs at Bell Laboratories, Bellcore, Ameritech, and US West and was a key contributor to development and standardization of telecommunication network systems and services. At Subscriber Computing, Inc., he was a key technical contributor to the development and deployment of the first WIN-based prepaid calling platform, which has been widely deployed by numerous international wireless carriers. Prior to joining Emida, he was Chief Architect at Objectwave, a Chicago-based software consultancy.

Brian L. Piltz, Vice President International Business Development
Responsible for the company's international sales, marketing and distribution of Emida's prepaid transaction processing services, Mr. Piltz brings over 20 years experience in sales of prepaid and postpaid software systems - both domestic and internationally. Prior to joining Emida in April 2002, Mr. Piltz held management positions for several leading providers of wireless solutions including Primal Solutions, International Telecommunications Data System and Subscriber Computing, Inc., where he developed key strategic relationships with Ericsson, and over 15 other wireless prepaid carriers throughout Latin America, Europe and Asia.

 

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