As of 07.09.07 Compass Plus Processing Centre will terminate its payment processing services for American Express cards. This follows a decision made by American Express on 31.05.2007 to grant 'Russian Standard' bank exclusive acquiring business rights. Negotiations between 'Russian Standard' and Compass Plus for the continued servicing of American Express cards did not lead to any comprehensive agreement.

Alliance Bank (Kazakhstan) completed its transition to a direct connection to VISA International with the technological support of Compass Plus.

In November 2006 Alliance Bank received the Principal Member status in VISA payment system, which marked the beginning of the transition to its independent processing of VISA card transactions. By the 21st of May 2007 the Bank was certified in issuing, ATM and POS acquiring (including VSDC) as well as in clearing programmes.

The new status in the VISA payment system will allow Alliance Bank to offer its customers cheaper, yet more convenient banking services as well as promoting the widening of the card products and services range.

The progress of the Alliance Bank project development:
In 2005 Alliance Bank launched a SMS-based messaging service built on TranzWare products from Compass Plus. In June 2006 the Bank connected the first ATM to its own in-house processing centre also built on TranzWare products. Currently, the system has over 200 ATMs connected to it. Around the same time the Bank began connecting POS terminals to its processing centre. In August 2006 Alliance Bank launched its own personalisation centre utilising TranzWare products (prior to this the Bank used its own system to issue cards). This enabled the Bank to make significant savings when issuing cards and considerably shorten card issuing times. Today, all cards are personalised in-house. Currently, Alliance Bank has over 100,000 cards in circulation. In December last year the Bank launched a new consumer crediting programme where the credit is available via “VISA Instant Issue” cards.

The Alliance Bank has plans for the considerable increase of its cardholder base and the widening of ATM and self-service terminal networks. Such a strategy will make the bank’s retail business more technology oriented and therefore, more convenient for its customers.

The seventh annual international conference “Payment Card — 2007” that took place on the 6-8 of June in Kiev (Ukraine) provided Compass Plus with the opportunity to present their latest developments in the area of electronic payment systems and generated a number of important business contacts. The event that facilitates the development of the Ukrainian payment and credit industry once again attracted a great number of international payment systems representatives, financial institutions, government organisations as well as software system developers and card personalisation hardware suppliers.

Compass Plus in collaboration with partners Gemalto, VASCO Data Security and VISA participated in the NOMOS-BANK project concerned with building of a new generation remote NOMOS-Link service based on EMV DPA technology.

NOMOS-Link uses cryptographic protection technology that allows NOMOS-BANK chip card holders perform secure banking operations via remote banking channels. When a customer applies for the Internet banking service he receives special card reading device – cryptocalculator. When the cardholder inserts the card into the device and enters the PIN a one-time unique password is displayed on the device’s screen which then can be used for customer identification when he accesses the Internet bank and for confirmation of the online banking operations. To date this is the only technology on the market that thanks to the guaranteed protection of the customer-bank communication channel offers near to complete protection against fraud and enables organisation of a safe Internet banking system.

At the NOMOS-Link service presentation senior vice-president at NOMOS-Bank, Natalia Matunina stated: “NOMOS-Link can revolutionise the traditional payments market: from one side, there is a steady rise in the number of banks offering remote banking – from 16 percent amongst all banks in 2005 to 29 percent this year, from the other side, consumers are more and more interested in a convenient remote service - 30 percent of customers in Moscow and 10 percent in other regions are actively using remote banking service. The growth of interest in the service is constrained by fraudsters activities that our new service is called to neutralise”.

NOMOS-Bank and their technological partners are the first companies to launch a product based on the EMV CAP technology in Russia as well as in the CEMEA region, said Oliver Hughes Head of the VISA International Representative Office in Russia.

NOMOS-BANK’s Internet banking system (built on TranzWare e-Bank from Compass Plus) works in a 24/7 mode and allows to pay for services of mobile service providers, ISPs, cable/satellite TV providers, public utility companies as well as enables transfers between accounts and setting up payment schedules that the system can use to automatically execute payments based on the parameters supplied by the bank customers. The system does not require installation of any special software and therefore, allows to perform banking operations at any point of access to the Internet.

NOMOS-BANK is amongst the top 20 largest banks in Russia and has Principle member status in both VISA and MasterCard. Since 2001 the Bank has been using its own processing centre built on TranzWare software products and currently has 170,000 cards in circulation. NOMOS-BANK has installed over 300 ATMs and its acquiring network is comprised of over 620 retailers.