SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - February 25, 2013) - Festival Transaction Services Inc., a leading financial services company for the fair and festival market, today announced a formal agreement with Fiesta® San Antonio Commission, a 122-year-old, metro-wide community event comprising over 100 individual events, happening April 18-28, 2013.

"We are honored to have Fiesta San Antonio as a customer," said Charles Brown, Chairman and CEO of FTS. "The history and community involvement of Fiesta and its events are well known among U.S. community events, and provide an ideal platform for the prepaid Visa card as a membership and entry ticket to individual events."

John Melleky, CEO of the Fiesta San Antonio Commission, said, "We conducted a number of interviews and reviews in our process of selecting FTS as our partner for this program. FTS offers unique benefits and services that we could not find anywhere else. We are excited about the prospects for the Visa prepaid card to offer great value to Fiesta San Antonio participants and visitors, and to increase Fiesta Commission membership."

FTS provides a turn-key solution for community events and their vendors to introduce credit and debit card processing into environments that traditionally have been largely cash transactions. FTS sets up secure wireless or Wi-Fi systems to process transactions, provides all of the needed processing equipment and provides same-day reporting by individual points of sale. "Our Master Merchant capability enables us to provide unique sales tracking and reporting features that will improve and in some cases be brand new for our Fiesta San Antonio event and vendor customers," said Brown. "The Fiesta San Antonio-Festivals.com co-branded Visa prepaid card serves as the ticket to get into participating events and takes advantage of the new card processing infrastructure FTS provides to individual Fiesta San Antonio events."

Fiesta® San Antonio will launch sales of Visa prepaid cards in March of 2013 in order to provide membership and merchandise sales well in advance of the opening event.  

About Fiesta® San Antonio

Fiesta San Antonio was founded as a community event in 1891 as The Battle of Flowers, in remembrance the Battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. Since then, it has been a community-wide event growing in number of individual events and community-building activities each year. Today, Fiesta San Antonio comprises more than 100 individual events, including 2 parades, 2 kings, numerous queen and several courts.

Fiesta San Antonio is second only to Mardi Gras in total attendance, at 3.6 million, but Fiesta San Antonio is the number one event in terms of community economic impact, totaling $284 million economic impact annually to the City of San Antonio.

About Financial Transaction Services, Inc. (FTS)

FTS offers transaction services to the fair and festival community including card processing, ticketing, promotion and sponsorship sales support for events, promotion and processing for performers and vendors and Festivals.com VIP prepaid cards for attendees. FTS also operates Festivals.com, the largest Internet resource for information on community festivals, fairs and events, with more than 40,000 events in 80-plus countries classified by Arts, Children, Culture, Motorsports, Music and Sports.