TSYS inks contracts with supermarket bank, merchant firm

Electronic payment processor TSYS said today it has signed an agreement with the largest supermarket bank in the United Kingdom to process its credit card portfolio.

Terms of the deal with Tesco Bank were not disclosed. But Columbus-based TSYS said it will handle the 2.4 million credit cards the company has active in the UK.

Tesco, the sixth-largest credit card issuer in the European country, is not altogether new to TSYS, however. TSYS has been processing its cards through The Royal Bank of Scotland Group since 2001. The transfer of the business should take place in the second quarter of 2011, the company said.

The Tesco deal comes a day after TSYS Acquiring Solutions, the merchant-processing side of TSYS, said it has renewed its contract with Sage Payment Solutions.

Sage, a division of Sage North America, has 155,000 commercial customers, helping them accept and process everything from credit and debit cards to electronic checks, gift cards and automatic payments.