New York City Renews Official Payments' Electronic Payment Processing Contract; Property Tax Payments May be Made Online

Business Wire, Nov 15, 2005

RESTON, Va. -- Official Payments Corp.(R), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tier Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: TIER), today announced that the City of New York Department of Finance has renewed its contract to provide credit and debit card payment processing through August 2007.

This contract renewal enables New York City residents to continue to make their property tax payments securely with an American Express(R), Discover(R), MasterCard(R) or VISA(R) debit or credit card twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, via the City's website at www.nyc.gov/finance.

New York City property taxes for each fiscal year beginning July 1 are paid either quarterly or semi-annually. The next property tax due date is January 1, 2006 for 2nd half or 3rd quarter payments.

"Providing this convenient tax payment option to New York City residents is in keeping with my focus on making Finance more efficient, more effective and more customer-friendly," said Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark. "We are finding more owners are taking advantage of this service and paying online through Finance's website. For example, during the third quarter of calendar year 2004, online payments of property taxes doubled from the same quarter in the previous year."

The New York City Department of Finance collects almost $12 billion in property taxes annually, maintains records for more than one million properties, conducts thousands of tax audits and adjudicates more than 1.5 million parking tickets each year.

"We are very pleased that New York City renewed our contract," said James R. Weaver, Tier's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We have partnered with the City since 2003 in providing our proven electronic payment processing services. New York City is at the forefront of leveraging technology for the benefit of its constituents, and it gives us great pleasure to have the opportunity to continue delivering the fastest, easiest, and most reliable electronic payment options available to the residents of New York City."

Official Payments provides electronic payment services for the Internal Revenue Service, 26 states, the District of Columbia and 2,000 local government clients nationwide. Official Payments' principal business is processing electronic payments on behalf of government entities via its Web site, www.officialpayments.com, and its toll-free telephone number, 1-800-2PAY-TAX(SM).

Official Payments charges citizens a convenience fee for the service. Citizens using credit or debit cards with bonus rewards programs may, depending on their card's program, earn reward points, airline frequent flyer miles or cash back for paying their taxes and fees.

About Tier

Tier is a leading provider of transaction processing and packaged software and systems integration services for public sector clients. We combine our understanding of enterprise-wide systems with domain knowledge enabling our clients to rapidly channel emerging technologies into their operations. We focus on sectors that we believe are driven by forces that make demand for our services less discretionary and are likely to provide us with recurring long-term revenue streams. More information about the Company is available at www.Tier.com.

Statements made in this press release that are not historical facts, including statements regarding expectations for future revenues, earnings, and expenses, are forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Tier undertakes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.

Each of these statements is made as of the date hereof based only on current information and expectations that are inherently subject to change and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in any of such statements due to various factors, including but not limited to failure by end consumers to make payments with credit or debit cards or electronic checks through Official Payments Corporation; impact of lower transaction volumes than anticipated; the potential loss of funding by clients, including due to government budget shortfalls or revisions to mandated statutes; the timing, initiation, completion, renewal, extension or early termination of client projects; the Company's ability to realize revenues from its business development opportunities; and unanticipated claims as a result of project performance, including due to the failure of software providers or subcontractors to satisfactorily complete engagements.

For a discussion of these and other factors which may cause our actual events or results to differ from those projected, please refer to the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended Sept. 30, 2004, our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2005, as well as other filings with the SEC.