installed at 620 retailers, and 6,000 cardholders had signed up, with a target of 40,000 cardholders and 1,000 vendors being pursued during the course of the one year trial. By September 1995, all buses, car parks and payphones were meant to accept Mondex, and 20 cashpoints and 300 payphones were meant to support funds transfers using the system. In July 1996, NatWest and Midland Bank sold the intellectual property rights to develop the Mondex concept, technology, and brand to a new group called Mondex International, with 17 major banks joining the group as shareholders. From that point on, Mondex International managed the Mondex brand, oversaw its franchisees and signed contracts with new ones around the globe. It also managed the Mondex technology and developed its software. In November that same year, Mastercard acquired 51% ownership of Mondex International and fully endorsed the Mondex scheme, promptly abandoning its own electronic cash system which had been in development up until then. Mastercard then acquired full ownership of the company in June 2001. In 1996 Visa and Mastercard agreed to what was known as the Upper West Side trial. Visa deployed Visa Cash, their own electronic cash scheme, and MasterCard deployed Mondex to see if the people on Manhattan Island would embrace the concept and the technology as a means of replacing cash. Mondex launched in a number of markets during the 1990s, expanding from the original trial in Swindon to Hong Kong, New York and Guelph, Canada. It was also trialled on several British university campuses from the late 1990s, including the University of Edinburgh, University of Exeter (between 1997 and 2001), University of York, University of Nottingham, Aston University and Sheffield Hallam University. Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s trials continued to be executed throughout the world, with varying degrees of customer adoption and popularity. At the end, even the more successful of these trials failed their purpose, as most of the countries which had Mondex pilots never saw a national implementation of the system - in many locations the scheme stayed in an experimental phase until the local Mondex franchisee shut its doors. Operation As a stored-value system, Mondex cards were designed as an electronic replacement for cash - they always held a certain value, allowing offline transactions to be possible without needing a line of credit or communication with the credit company, like with a traditional credit card.