St. Paul, Minn.— Deluxe Corporation (NYSE: DLX) announced today that it has adopted a plan to avail itself of the recently issued Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The rule allows a company to repurchase its securities at times when it otherwise might be prevented from doing so under the insider trading laws, provided, among other things, that the repurchases are made pursuant to a plan adopted when the company is not aware of material nonpublic information. The plan permits Deluxe to repurchase shares at times when it ordinarily would not be in the market because of self-imposed trading blackout periods, such as the days or weeks immediately preceding its quarterly earnings releases. The Company also expects to continue to make open market purchases during its normal trading window periods. The Rule 10b5-1 plan authorizes Deluxe’s securities broker to purchase up to 4 million shares in the aggregate during the Company’s blackout periods for the fiscal year 2001 reporting period and is part of the 14 million share repurchase program approved by Deluxe’s board of directors in January, 2001. Deluxe indicated that it has repurchased approximately 4 million shares by way of open-market trades since the share repurchase program went into effect. "Taking advantage of Rule 10b5-1 gives us the flexibility to continue share repurchases in an orderly and systematic manner during our normal blackout periods," said Deluxe chairman and CEO, Lawrence J. Mosner. "Repurchases made under this new rule, in addition to the purchases we plan to make during our normal trading window periods, will help us to reach our goal of repurchasing 14 million shares."