Monday, July 26 2010 11:47
"Boom" of projects on plastic cards to start in Armenia in 2011
ArmInfo. A "boom" of loyalty projects on plastic cards will start in Armenia in 2011, said Mesrop Hakobyan, member of the Unibank Board, Director for Card Business Development, with ArmInfo correspondent.
He thinks that for this purpose the banks need to be seriously equipped with technologies. At the same time, Hakobyan said that today Unibank is exerting all efforts to fully prepare for the "boom". In particular, the bank is carrying active work to launch its own processing center in September-October 2010. According to him, the bank has directed about 1 mln USD to the new processing center. The bank has bought the processing center with a Smart Vista software from the large Russian company BPC, which will work out all the software solutions and deliver the relevant equipment to Yerevan if necessary.
Hakobyan said that the launch of the bank's own processing will extend the product range of Unibank, particularly, new projects with producers and trade networks will be created. "We have already concluded preliminary agreements on cooperation with several well-known companies to launch the loyalty project, which is based on the idea of bonus points. For instance, having paid for various commodities and services, a client will at the same time be able to earn points (money), which will be accumulated on his card account",- he said. Hakobyan added that the bonus points are determined by the trade and servicing point where the client carries out a transaction. According to him, the loyalty project on the basis of chip cards will allow the card holders to receive on-line real time balance, i.e. having received the bonus for a transaction, the client will be able to see his points without waiting for the monthly period to count the points.
Within the frames of the new processing, the bank is going to issue real muticurrency cards implying several accounts in various currencies on a card. That is to say, this is not only multicurrency, but also multicard multicurrency service, which is convenient from the viewpoint of using any currency at a good hour.
At the same time, Hakobyan assured that a processing center of its own does not imply Unibank's withdrawal from the Armenian Card national payment system. Unibank will remain a full-fledged member of Armenian Card and continue issuing ArCa cards. "We and ArCa have already initiated the process of bilateral H2H connection of two processing systems to allow the cards issued with Unibank's own embosser to be served in the Armenian Card's network of bancomats without hindrance, and, on the other hand, allow ArCa cards to be served by the Unibank's processing center",- he stressed and added that one of the main advantages for the clients will be reduction in commission fees for transactions with Unibank's cards, as the prime cost of services will also be reduced.
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