LONDON, September 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Retail Decisions (ReD), a card issuer and a world leader in card fraud prevention and payment processing is pleased to announce a new research and development project in conjunction with City University London, the UK's leading research centre in neural computing. The project will focus on enhancing and advancing ReD's neural technology PRISM(R).

PRISM(R) is ReD's proprietary neural technology developed by Nobel Prize winning scientist, Dr. Leon Cooper. The PRISM product line utilises both predictive neural and rules-based technologies and is designed to keep pace with the ever-changing patterns of behaviour in the area of financial fraud.

Total losses on UK-issued payment cards rose by 25 per cent in 2007 to GBP535.2m according to payments group APACS; that is more than GBP10m being lost every week by UK businesses despite the tools already put in place to tackle the problem.

Dr. Mark Goldspink, Managing Director of ReD Merchant Services said: "ReD's fraud prevention systems review 14 billion card transactions around the globe, annually. ReD prevents around GBP600m in attempted fraudulent purchases for our clients every year. ReD is committed to advancing payment fraud detection by working with the research team at City University London. City University London takes a refreshing approach to working with commercial partners and together we are looking at the future of fraud prevention."

Nick Ryman-Tubb, honorary visiting research fellow at City University London, heading up the anti-fraud research said: "We are delighted to welcome ReD to the growing number of businesses who are joining with academia to solve real-world problems. We are confident that our research at City University London will have a major impact on helping to prevent card crime."

Neural computing has already proven to be a good ally in the war against sophisticated payment fraud, so this leading edge research with City University London, will help strengthen ReD's core neural computing technology which is used daily to screen millions of payment transactions.

About Retail Decisions

Retail Decisions (ReD) is a payment card issuer and world leader in card fraud prevention and payment processing. A specialist supplier to the payments industry worldwide, ReD has over 20+ years experience in the fraud prevention market. Its blue-chip international clients come from the global retail, telecommunications, travel, petroleum, logistics, banking and the broader e-commerce sectors. They include Wal-Mart, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Tesco, Texaco, Shell, Asda, Comet, Travelocity, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile. Based in the UK, the company has offices in the United States, Australia and South Africa with representation in Japan, India, China and South America. More information about ReD is available at http://www.redplc.com.

About City University London

The Department of Computing at City University London has for many years been involved in the research and development of distributed and intelligent systems, shaping them to the demands of problems in engineering, bioinformatics, business and creativity, through a number of EPSRC, UK and European funded collaborative projects. The department's Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Software Engineering teams have both been involved in applied research on AI, machine learning and neural networks.

About Nick Ryman-Tubb

Nick Ryman-Tubb founded and ran a UK neural firm that today scrutinises billions of telephone calls every day that protects 1-in-7 of the world's mobile telephone subscribers from fraud. He has developed solutions for businesses using neural computers for almost 20-years. He is a well-know innovator, with successes such as the first neural computer to "taste champagne" and "sniff out explosives and drugs" - headlined by the national press as "The Computer with the Hooter", he has pioneered "thinking" computers in the telecommunications and financial sector for detecting fraud. Today he is researching new neural approaches at the Department of Computing at City University London.

Contacts: Carl Clump Kami Boyer Chief Executive Head of Group Marketing Retail Decisions Retail Decisions Tel : +44(0)1483-728700 Tel: +44(0)1483-728700 email : ceo@redplc.com email: kboyer@redplc.com

Contacts: Carl Clump, Chief Executive, Retail Decisions, Tel : +44(0)1483-728700, email : ceo@redplc.com; Kami Boyer, Head of Group Marketing, Retail Decisions, Tel: +44(0)1483-728700, email: kboyer@redplc.com