Consignia has signed a £2.4 million contract with transaction management company Link Interchange Network (Link) to extend banking services at all post office branches across the UK.
The deal will connect the post office to those banks and building societies that have signed up to the Link network. Link runs the UK's cash machine network with over 35,000 cash machines (6600 of which are currently operated by independent cash machine operators) and there are over 82 million Link cards in issue.
"This represents a key step towards offering customers greater access to their cash across our network of some 18,000 branches free of charge," says Basil Larkins, executive director strategic alliances, Post Office Ltd.
"It will support the provision of universal banking services to enable customers to continue collecting their benefits in cash at the Post Office after the switch to automated credit transfer (ACT) from April 2003," he says.
EDS/Citibank has been chosen to provide all back office processing, card production and call centre facilities to support the Post Office card account.