Gold Magazine January - February 2014, Issue 34 | Seite 34

PROFILE

EDITH KESSLERCHARALAMBOUS,
SENIOR DIRECTOR,
PRIME LICENSING
CLIENT SUPPORT
SERVICES
“Our corporate values
are integrity, relationships – valuing their
worth and respect for
every individual – excellence, innovation
and growth. Together
they have built an
extremely strong company culture and an
even stronger, quality
of service.”

KENNETH
CUSCHIERI,
DIRECTOR HUMAN
RESOURCES
“Our Cyprus office
continues to contribute to TSYS’ global
growth strategy. The
level of expertise and
high percentage of
university-educated
graduates has continued to make Cyprus a good location
for talent over the
years.”

EVELYNE MOUSSA,
SENIOR DIRECTOR APPLICATION
SYSTEMS
“The development for
our flagship licensed
PRIME product –
which has expanded
across 70 countries
spanning Europe, the
CIS, Asia, the Middle
East and Africa – has
largely been borne
out of Cyprus. This is
a great testament to
the ability of the local
team.”

can be found locally. We service clients
as far away as Brazil, Japan, Norway and
South Africa from Cyprus. In total, we
provide services to more than 100 clients in more than 70 countries, and our
Cyprus office is key to the servicing of
this extensive client base.
Gold: How does the European market
compare to that of the US, particularly when it comes to innovation in
payments?
M.M.: I would say that there are some
marked differences; the US is the largest
market in the world and because of this
it has given rise to some of the world’s
largest financial institutions as well as
some of the largest service providers,
such as TSYS. Until recently, the US
payments market was largely driven
by volume, not innovation. However,
the advent of new technologies such as
mobile is changing this landscape very
rapidly. There is a tremendous amount
of investment taking place at the moment in payments and we expect this to
radically transform the way we transact.
The merging of payments into the
mobile space and into social networks
is happening at such a frantic pace that
no-one can really say what the payment
landscape will look like in 5 years time.
What I can tell you, though, is that the
world will need reliable payment service providers such as TSYS to ensure
that the payment experience remains
smooth, safe and secure.
Gold: Do the 250 people in the Cyprus office have a particular focus or
expertise as a team?
M.M.: The team has a spread of disciplines, ranging from project management and programming though to relationship account management, business
development and sales support and business system analysis. The focus tends
to be on the programming and delivery
side. I think it is worth mentioning that
some of our key R&D work on PRIME
is being done out of our Cyprus office.
Gold: Do the employees of the Cyprus branch support or collaborate
with their counterparts in other TSYS
locations?
M.M.: Most definitely. We are part of
a global network of 23 offices across
15 countries which support our clients
through multiple touch points. We
make extensive use of the concept of

virtual teams, where team members
from multiple locations collaborate to
deliver a project.
Gold: How valuable is the Cyprus
office in the portfolio of TSYS locations?
M.M.: TSYS fosters a strong peopleculture so team members are valued
across the entire company and our Corporate Executives always cite TSYS team
members as the ‘secret sauce’ that serves
to differentiate us, along with our solutions, as a leading payments partner. I
would also mention that the Cyprus office serves the growing portfolio of EUbased clients for TSYS very effectively.
Gold: Has your business been affected
at all by the events of March in Cyprus?
M.M.: Overall no, as our services out
of Cyprus are globally-focused. However, we do support some of the Cyprus
banks which were affected. On the other
hand, I’ve been impressed by our individual team members’ response to the
Cyprus community. They ran one charity drive for families in need in March
and are running another one now for
this holiday season to support the Alkionides charity – all initiated by the team
members themselves.
Gold: Do you have any plans for further expansion or investment, either
in Cyprus or internationally?
M.M.: Yes, in Cyprus we’re investing
in new modern facilities to support our
large team. As a company, we also plan
to grow through acquisitions and in July
2013 we completed the acquisition of
NetSpend for approximately $1.4 billion. It is a reloadable prepaid debit card
and related financial services company
catering to under-banked consumers in
the United States.
Gold: What can we expect from TSYS
Inc and TSYS (Cyprus) in the near
future?
M.M.: Good things. We’re heavily
focused on being an innovator in the
payment space and we definitely have
the expertise and bright-minded people
in our Cyprus-based team members
and beyond to continue to develop our
leading technologies. The world of payments is radically changing through the
integration of mobile and TSYS will be
at the forefront of all of these changes.

34 Gold THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT, FINANCE & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MAGAZINE OF CYPRUS

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