A team of 16 from Welwyn Garden City based company PayPoint, the UK’s leading cash and internet payments company, raised £3,700 for the British Heart Foundation by cycling from London to Brighton on Sunday 15th June 2008.  Among the riders was CEO Dominic Taylor, who led the team on their seven hour journey.

The London to Brighton Bike Ride 2008 is the UK’s largest charity bike ride, which sees 27,000 riders cycling from London to Brighton on the south coast, in order to raise money which goes towards pioneering research, patient care and vital information.

Over 650,000 riders have taken part to raise more than £40 million for the charity since it began in 1980, which is when the British Heart foundation first became involved with the London to Brighton Bike Ride.

Charlotte Barnes, Chair of the PayPoint Charity Committee, comments:  “PayPoint proactively supports both local and national charities through a range of fund raising activities including dress down days and organised events. The British Heart Foundation is one of our key charities this year and those that entered the London to Brighton Bike Ride did so for a range of reasons. We were delighted that so many of the PayPoint team volunteered their time and energy to take the challenge and raise such a significant amount of money for a very worthwhile cause.”

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Enquiries:
PayPoint Press Office 
020 7100 9999
paypoint@mischiefpr.com

Notes to Editors
PayPoint is the leading cash and internet payments company in the UK also with operations in Ireland and Romania. We handle in excess of £7 billion from over 503 million transactions annually for more than 5,000 clients and merchants. The company operates with several payment networks:

• The PayPoint branded retail network numbers over 19,800 terminals located in local shops (including Co-op, Spar, Costcutter, Sainsburys Local, One Stop, Londis and thousands of independents) in all parts of the UK and Ireland. Terminals handle gas and electricity meter prepayments, cash bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, London Congestion Charges, TV licences and a wide variety of other payment types for all of the leading utilities, telecommunications suppliers and many consumer service companies. This network is used by consumers, free of charge, over 8 million times a week. The network has 99% population cover on a 1 mile urban or 5 miles rural measure;
• Multiple retailer connections into the electronic till systems of over 4,300 outlets in addition to the branded terminal outlets including BP, Somerfield and Superdrug for mobile top-ups and selected payments from the PayPoint range;
• An ATM network which has 2,016 ‘LINK’ branded machines across the UK, also typically in convenience stores; 
• PayPoint.net, an internet payment service provider, provides secure credit and debit card payments for over 4,800 web merchants linking into all the major UK acquiring banks; and
• Pay Store, a Romanian mobile top-up operator with over 4,000 outlets equipped with electronic terminals and 2,000 other retail outlets. A bill payment service has been added to increase the breadth of PayPoint’s offering in Romania, in line with the UK branded retail network. 
  

PayPoint floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2004 and the company’s market capitalisation at 16 June 2008 was £405 million. PayPoint is widely recognised for its leadership in prepayment systems, smart technology and consumer service.