New digital card services and first implementations in the country announced by BORICA during an online seminar under BORICA’s New Generation Programme.
New digital payment services, updates in hardware and software infrastructure and first implementations in Bulgarian banks announced BORICA during an online seminar under the BORICA New Generation programme. The seminar, moderated by Nelly Jolovska, Sales Director, was attended by experts from various departments of the Company, as well as representatives of partners - Bulgarian-American Credit Bank and Postbank. The outsourcing of POS and ATM devices, on which BORICA is building a concept for a new service to financial institutions, and the innovative payment acceptance service Software POS were among the leading topics of the event, the latter already being implemented on a pilot basis in Bulgaria and used by the customers of Postbank.
The POS software provides contactless payments to merchants and a web-based portal through which they are able to access all transaction information to them, manage their company profile and set various settings. Currently, the service can be used via any mobile device with NFC communication and Android operating system and is expected to be available for iOS in the future, as Alexander Cholakov, Head of ATM and POS Payment Acceptance explained.
Postbank is the first bank in Bulgaria to offer the new generation Smart POS digital innovation for contactless payments, which turns the smartphone into a POS terminal. Thanks to its perfectly structured functionalities, every merchant has the opportunity to offer contactless payments to their customers directly via their mobile phone, without the need to maintain a traditional POS terminal," Dimitar Shumarov, CEO and Member of the Management Board of Postbank, told the panelists, adding that the application is a suitable working solution for micro, small and medium-sized businesses, as well as for large companies.
The high-tech Smart POS service is in fact only one of those that make us a leading bank in the field of online products, because here we can add our other innovations such as virtual POS, Unattended POS, as well as standard physical POS," he said, and specially thanked BORICA for the excellent operational interaction and successful work in the overall process of implementing the service, which took less than three months. Over the past year, BORICA has reported significant progress on major phases of the BORICA Next Generation program such as National Switch and ATM migrations. The company has implemented the PSD2 regulations as required by international card schemes, providing reliable card transactions over the internet. "This progress demonstrates that we are able to come together as a community and overcome obstacles such as remote operation and complex implementations to ensure stable operation in the process of migrating nearly 2.5 million cards to the Internet and the devices supporting these payments," Miroslav Vichev, CEO of BORICA said.
The payment operator has completely modernised its infrastructure with the most state-of-the-art hardware and software solutions, including Oracle database, disaster recovery solutions, etc., complying with all information security and quality management standards such as PCI DSS, ISO 9001 and ISO 20022. In the application software area, the company uses the internationally recognized Way4 platform from leading vendor OpenWay and offers customers key features that build on the core system-including web portals that allow merchants and banks to track their business, generate reports, and perform a variety of operations. This was announced by Peter Burov, Head of Card Products and Issuing, who also presented BORICA's innovations in the area of digital wallets.
The challenges and business benefits of implementing Acquiring CMS as a Service at Bulgarian-American Credit Bank (BACB) were presented at the seminar by the bank's CEO and Board Member Alexander Dimitrov. The project includes migration of the ATM fleet and virtual POS devices. BACB is currently preparing the migration of the physical terminals and testing POS as a Service. The new system simplifies the monitoring of ATM devices, provides real-time access to them and provides an optimal request and installation process. "To date, we are already enjoying the benefits of the project. They create new opportunities and facilitate both customers and the bank's team," said Alexander Dimitrov, emphasizing the functionality of the new system.
Boyan Damyanov, Head of E-commerce and Mobile Services at BORICA, focused on BORICA's value-added services in the field of e-commerce during the seminar, touching upon topics such as changes in European legislation and regulatory technical standards and how they have affected 3DS solutions. Boyan Damyanov presented data on the company's progress in this area, including new customers attracted and migration to biometric solutions. Daniela Vassileva, expert in the Business Development section, announced the available functionalities of the 3DS ACS solution, which currently includes 3 main authentication methods, as well as BORICA's biometric authentication solutions, including the B-Trust Mobile service. Some innovative 3DS MPI solutions such as Credential on File and Recurring payments were also presented.
Among the main topics of the seminar was the production of cards. Yordan Paunov, Head of the Data Preparation and Personalization Section, presented the leading trends in card personalization, including card design, as well as additional services developed by BORICA over the last two years. BORICA has delivered over 500,000 payment cards to the Bulgarian market since the start of deliveries in 2019. Also, since 2019 the company has received over 400,000 requests for delivery of electronic PINs, which eliminate the need for the cardholder to receive their card and PIN on different days, as Yordan Paunov announced.
BORICA will focus its efforts on two main strands within the BORICA New Generation project in 2022 - implementation of migration projects in the Acquiring part (with the main focus on CMSaaS migration projects), Katerina Blagoeva, Head of Project Management announced. On the other hand, the company plans to launch and implement the functionality in the "Issuing" part of the WAY4 system. It is also planned to implement a third scheme for centralized acceptance of card transactions (JCB).
The BORICA New Generation programme brings together innovative technologies in the field of card payments, providing a reliable and flexible system for the management of cards, POS and ATM devices and merchants. It allows the Company's customers to easily and quickly implement a variety of new e-commerce, tokenization and digital wallet services.
