On May, 24 a workshop “Banking Cards: Profitable Solutions” was held in International Education Centre in Minsk.
The workshop was held on the initiative of NovaCard company with participation of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus and Minsk Capital Association of Entrepreneurs and Employers. NovaCard regularly holds such workshops in Russia and other CIS states.
The participants included heads of over 40 plastic cards departments of all medium and large banks of the republic, including ASB “Belarusbank”, JSC “Belpromstrybank”, JSC “Belvnesheconombank”, JSC “Belinvestbank”, JSC “Belagroprombank” etc. and also the National Payment System “Belcard”.
NovaCard as the leader of plastic cards in Russia and other CIS states draws attention to itself because of, first, high rates of growth of the banking cards market in Belarus (in 2006 the growth totaled over 40%) and, second, efficient projects of NovaCard that already exist in Belarus In particular, it is a project with the largest Belarusian bank – “Belarusbank” to deliver plastic cards with a magnetic line and also chip EMV cards.
The participants appreciated the reports of NovaCard staff members about its goods for banks, quality standards systems, projects to produce EMV cards and EMV migration, social and transport cards.
The participants asked the most number of questions to the speaker about requirements of NovaCard to quality control (control of color rendering, elements location, bond resistance of card edges, parameters of the magnetic line), and also to the system of the company goods standards according to requirements of international payment system.
The variants of the projects to produce EMV cards for Belarusian banks raised an active discussion. The speaker told in details the project to produce EMV cards for “Belarusbank”. The bankers actively discussed opportunities to increase profits of banks from implementation of projects for social and transport cards that have been presented by NovaCard staff members.
According to the tradition of the recent years of cooperation, representatives of international payment systems Visa International and MasterCard Worldwide took part in the workshop together with NovaCard staff members. In particular, the Vice-President of MasterCard Europe Andrey Tarusov and the CIS Regional Manager of Visa Svetlana Georbelidze presented their reports about goods for banks and development of the plastic cards market in the CIS states.
In the end of the workshop representatives of banks and business community of the Republic of Belarus expressed their confidence that cooperation of Belarusian banks with NovaCard would be efficient and would make its contribution to development of partnership relations between the two states – the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.
