Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Bill Townsend Joins Pay by Touch


Pay By Touch Names Bill Townsend Executive Vice President, Office of the CEO

MarketWatch: Last Update: 6:32 AM ET Feb 21, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 21, 2006 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Pay By Touch, the global leader of biometric authentication, personalized rewards, and payment solutions, today announced that Bill Townsend has been named executive vice president, office of the chief executive officer. In this capacity, Townsend will work closely with Pay By Touch founder, chairman, and CEO John Rogers to oversee the company's strategic and visionary efforts.

Townsend brings to Pay By Touch a rich background in launching new companies. He was a part of the founding management team at Internet search engine Lycos, Inc. and has launched and managed several companies including YouthStream Media Networks (now Alloy), GeoCities (now Yahoo!), NewsAlert (now MarketWatch), Deja News (now Google and eBay), and voice-over IP pioneer Really Easy Internet (now Hey, Inc.).

"Bill's track record for success with several major companies has already proven invaluable with our recent acquisition activities," said John Rogers, founder, chairman, and CEO of Pay By Touch. "I've known and worked with Bill for more than six years and am confident that his expertise across industries will continue to add value to Pay By Touch as we continue growing our customer and consumer base and enter into new vertical markets."

Townsend's 20 years of diverse business experience span education, media, and technology. Prior to joining Pay By Touch, Townsend was a partner and managing director of Interminds, LLC, a management-consulting firm that assists companies with strategic planning, troubleshooting, consumer adoption, incubation, and pre-IPO guidance. He also served as chief marketing officer of Cyber Operations, a technology research and development firm conducting military and government initiatives, and vice president and director of marketing for Ketchum, a global Top 20 advertising agency, where he ran global new business. Townsend was also the Republican nominee for United States Congress in 1992, Pennsylvania District 20.

Townsend earned his bachelor's degree at The College of Wooster and an MBA in global management from the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University. He lectures on entrepreneurship and private equity finance in the MBA department at Baylor.

For additional company information, or to download a high-resolution photo of Bill Townsend, please visit the Pay By Touch online press kit:
www.paybytouch.com/news/presskit.html.

About Pay By Touch

Pay By Touch is the global leader of biometric authentication, personalized rewards, and payment solutions. The company's patented biometric products and services enable shoppers to conveniently and securely access personal accounts using a finger scan to identify themselves, make purchases, cash checks, and earn rewards. Pay By Touch also provides robust payment processing solutions for ACH, card-present and card-not-present debit and credit transactions. To date, Pay By Touch services over 154,000 retail clients, manages personalized rewards programs for more than 130 million opt-in consumers, and has more than 2.3 million shoppers using biometric authentication products and services at 2,000+ locations coast to coast. Founded in 2002, Pay By Touch is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco that employs more than 500 professionals and holds more than two-dozen U.S. issued patents. For additional company information, visit
www.paybytouch.com.

SOURCE Pay By Touch Shannon Riordan of Pay By Touch(TM), +1-415-281-2253, or shannon.riordan@paybytouch.com; or Aaren Weidner of Porter Novelli, +1-408-369-4667, or aaren.weidner@porternovelli.com, for Pay By Touch
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