News

Russia's universal e-card goes live on SmartVista

January 31, 2013

Following a plague of delays, it's beginning to look as though Russia's Universal Electronic Card is finally getting off the ground.

BPC Banking Technologies, a provider of open system e-payment solutions, has announced implementation of the UEC processing center — one of the key components of the e-government project. All systems are now ready to issue and process cards at the national level, the company said in a news release.

The Universal Electronic Card is the key to a wide range of public programs and services and is designed to simplify access, reduce time spend and increase convenience. The card is also meant to deliver commercial services, including debit card functionality. In time, the card will receive further functional enhancements to support an expanded product range.

The UEC project has now been launched throughout Russia. To date, more than 10,000 citizens have applied for the card and around 4,000 cards have been issued. 

BPC Banking Technologies was chosen through a tender process to develop the processing system for the UEC and to integrate all UEC providers, partners and third-party solutions, including the state-services portal, using its SmartVista product.

SmartVista is the kernel for data processing services across the full range of services available on the cards, including data capture, routing and authorization for services requested by individual cardholders.

BPC Banking Technologies also supports the issuing of these cards, the chosen applications on each card, and the single processing and billing center for all non-financial services transaction flows.

"From the initial idea stage it was obvious that a project of this sophistication would be complex and challenging to implement," said Vasily Grigoriev, CEO of BPC Banking Technologies. "Additional complexity was added due to the multiple service providers and institutional levels that were involved.

"[T]his project became an opportunity for us to use the SmartVista's entire functionality as nonfinancial data processing is overlapping the more traditional payment portions. We are proud to have played a key role in bringing a sophisticated e-government project live and are looking forward to helping the regions deploy their own billing and processing centers," Grigoriev said.

Read more about transaction processing.