MBTS-BANK (Moscow, Russia) with the technical support from Compass Plus have successfully completed on- and offline certification in Diners Club Russia. Based on the certification results the Bank has the right to issue and acquire payment cards under the brand of “Diners Club International” as well as accept these cards in their own ATM network. Although it was the first time that Compass Plus have performed certification with Diners Club Russia, the procedure has been successful and was completed on time. The commercial launch of the TranzWare module responsible for driving Diners Club card issuing and acquiring is planned to start before the end of the year.

MBTS-BANK are building their own in-house processing centre on several products from Compass Plus including TranzWare CMS, TranzWare Online and TranzWare Card Factory. In the near future the processing centre will also be able to process cards under the brands of “Visa” and “MasterCard”. The Bank was one of the first Compass Plus’ clients to prefer Linux operating system as a platform for developing their own processing centre.

Compass Plus was in attendenace at the Sub-Regional Conference (Cape Town, South Africa) organized by Visa CEMEA for its member banks operating in Russia and CIS.

This year’s conference titled ‘Visa Card Portfolio Management’ provided banks with the opportunity to learn more about the methods of card portfolio management, the marketing role in the development and strengthening of the payment card business as well as about the additional products and services, credit scoring, credit risk management, credit card business development, fighting payment card fraud and many other current issues. In addition to this, bank representatives were able to share their experiences in the running of a payment card business, speak to Visa and vendor specialists, discuss business opportunities, tendencies in the market and the future outlook of the payment card industry.

As part of the conference IT vendors exhibited their Visa-compliant products and solutions. Compass Plus presented the full suite of its TranzWare products developed to address all the current issues faced by the payment card businesses.

As part of the modernisation to its in-house processing centre, Alliance Bank (Kazakhstan) was successfully certified in EMV issuing and acquiring programmes at Visa International. The processing centre is built on Compass Plus software products: TranzWare Online, TranzWare CMS, TranzWare Card Factory, TranzWare Fraud Analyzer and TranzWare Messaging Gate. All of the Bank’s terminal equipment is connected to the processing centre and by the end of 2006 the Bank plans to migrate te existing card issuing to the new systems and commence issuing the new card products.

Dauren Kereibaev, the vice-chairman at Alliance Bank, has stressed that Compass Plus has helped Alliance Bank to realise their development objectives in the area of their own payment card business. Mr. Kereibaev noted that the Bank has relatively ambitious payment card plans, some of which are rather innovative. The vice-chairman said “Currently we are at a starting point – we began to install ATMs, issued around 50 thousand cards. I am sure that in the near future the share of Alliance Bank in the plastic card market will be in keeping with the place that the Bank currently holds in relation to the asset size and shareholders’ equity in the rating of the Kazakh banks, that is the fourth”.

Compass Plus have been certified for compliance with American Express’ international norms and standards in the area of merchant processing through an independent technological portal.

The certification guarantees compatibility of information processing formats between Compass Plus’ terminal equipment and software and American Express’ systems. Compass Plus has the right to independently programme and service the terminals installed at retail organisations – the customers of the company.

Zoran Novakovich, the director of the Acquiring Development Department at American Express Bank, highlighted that successful certification is a very important stage of the development and once again acknowledges that Compass Plus complies with the standards of the international level. Mr. Novakovich also stated that American Express is confident that the ability to independently process American Express cards will make the processing technology more effective and enhance the customer service delivered by Compass Plus.

Moscomprivatbank (Moscow, Russia) has launched a payment card fraud monitoring and prevention system based on TranzWare Fraud Analyzer from Compass Plus.

The system is designed to monitor and detect suspicious payment card activities and cardholder actions, which allows timely prevention of fraud.  At its core TranzWare Fraud Analyzer has customer-defined business rules that follow business as opposed to programming logic. System users are offered an extensive set of tools that allow them to customise the system according to the particular market characteristics, business needs and other preferences, and include: designing of user-defined algorithms, business rules, documents, etc. 

Launching the TranzWare Fraud Analyzer system is another large-scale project undertaken by Moscomprivatbank in technological partnership with Compass Plus and is based on the successful running of the system at PrivatBank (Ukraine) since early 2005.

Moscomprivatbank is a part of PrivatBank group, which is in the TOP-1000 world’s largest banks (as rated by The Banker). PrivatBank (also a customer of Compass Plus) is one of the leading payment card issuers in Eastern and Central Europe (over 10 million cards) and has one of the most extensive customer interaction networks in the CIS (2,056 branches, 3,531 ATMs, over 17,000 POS-terminals). Moscomprivatbank is a Principal Member of MasterCard International and Associated Member of Visa International. The Bank is represented in 16 regions of Russian Federation and based on the effectiveness of it branch network is rated 15th amongst banks in Russia (as rated by The National Banking Journal). Moscomprivatbank has installed over 600 ATMs, 3,000 POS-terminals and issued more than 450,000 payment cards.

Hipoteku Banka (Mortgage and Land Bank of Latvia, Riga, Latvia) with the technical support from Compass Plus have been successfully certified in the EMV for Maestro Issuing, EMV for MasterCard Issuing and EMV for POS Acquiring programmes at MasterCard. The certification process for the EMV ATM Acquiring programme is also underway and when completed this will establish the bank as a fully certified issuer and acquirer of cards under the brand of MasterCard.

Hipoteku Banka have been with Compass Plus for over two years and it currently runs its card business on several products from Compass Plus, including TranzWare CMS, TranzWare Online, TranzWare Point of Interaction, TranzWare e-Commerce and TranzWare Card Factory.

The three main operational directives of Hipoteku Banka are lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, initiating legislation and issuing mortgage bonds and providing retail banking services on a commercial basis to customers all over Latvia.

Nadra Bank (Kiev, Ukraine) in association with Compass Plus have completed certification of its in-house processing centre and were also certified as an EMV-acquirer in the Visa International payment system. Nadra Bank are running their processing centre on products developed by Compass Plus, including TranzWare Online and TranzWare CMS. The setting up their own processing centre provides the Bank with the opportunity to significantly improve its product and service offerings as well as further enrich its customer service due to direct interchange with the payment system. The certification in EMV-acquiring also allows the Bank to accept EMV payment cards in their acquiring network, therefore considerably improving security.

Primarily, the setting up of the in-house processing centre will give Nadra Bank the much needed flexibility in managing their extensive customer base and significant number of payment cards in circulation (currently, Nadra bank has issued over 4 million cards under the brands of the international payment systems). In addition, the processing centre will allow for the effective management of all diverse card business activities, support the most advanced payment technologies and most importantly make the Bank independent in developing and launching new card products.

Nadra Bank is one of the 10 largest Ukrainian banks and is one of the leading payment card issuers and acquirers in the market. The bank offers a truly diverse range of modern banking services and has a network of over 550 branches nationwide. Nadra Bank has over 4 million international payment cards in circulation, 2.7 of which are under the brand of Visa International. The Bank has a network of over 600 ATMs and 3,200 multifunctional POS-terminals.

Compass Plus increases efficiency of applied systems.

Within the framework of developing a new technological platform (DBP2) the runtime environment of applied classes that realise a banking system’s business logic was transferred into JAVA VM Oracle. This will boost the efficiency of the applied systems within the TranzWare family (and potentially other systems) by several times.

To obtain further information on the project, please contact us.

Compass Plus took part in the 3rd annual international banking conference “Retail Banking Business Development Perspectives in the Region” that took place in Tbilisi, Geaorgia on the 28-30 June 2006. The conference was organised by one of Compass Plus’ customers - the Peoples Bank of Georgia http://www.peoplesbank.ge/.

The director or Compass Plus’ regional office (Moscow, Russia) delivered a presentation about state-of-the-art technologies provided by the company that facilitate automation of retail banking business and enable financial institutions to offer a broad and innovative range of banking services to their customers. In one of the presentations, the director of the Plastic Cards Department at the bank - Maya Heladze, spoke highly of Compass Plus’ contribution in establishing the bank’s own processing centre and completing migration of the largest payment card database in Georgia in a remarkably short period of time. Compass Plus and the Peoples Bank of Georgia are planning to extend their relationship as part of the Bank’s payment card business development strategy.

Attending the conference gave Compass Plus the opportunity to gain a number of useful business contacts and it is hoped that we will have the chance to visit the conference annually.

The Peoples Bank of Georgia has a Principal Member status in Visa International. The bank has largest branch network in Georgia (125 branches) and is commissioned to implement and run governmental and social programmes (such as pension schemes, social benefits schemes, etc). The bank serves over 1.5 million customers every month.

Compass Plus has launched an in-house processing centre based on TranzWare products in Investment City Bank (Novosibirsk, Russia). The processing centre is the first in Novosibirsk capable of processing VISA payment cards.

In 2006 Investment City Bank commenced its expansion into the retail banking sector and as part of this strategy the bank made a decision to become a member of the VISA payment system and create an in-house processing centre. Along with the Bank’s requirement for a processing centre functionality was the key condition for the project to be implemented in  the fastest possible time. Compass Plus won the tender for supplying the solution and the contracts between the parties were signed at the beginning of April. By the 22nd of April the installation of TranzWare Online (front office system), CMS (back office system) and Card Factory (card personalisation and issuance solution) had been completed on the Bank’s own hardware.  By the end of May Investment City Bank had been certified by VISA. The system “went live” on the 19th of June, taking just under three months from the signing of contracts to full system implementation.

As part of further project development plans, Compass Plus will realise an on-line interface to the core banking system - RS-Bank as well as an interface to the  bill presentment and payment system, “Gorod”.

Investment City Bank is one of the most dynamically developing financial institutions in Russia offering a wide range of banking services to corporate and private customers.