The Savings Bank of The Russian Federation (SBRF), the largest Russian banking corporation, has contracted with International Financial Systems to license its TPII product for two of its primary regions. The licenses will manage the SBRF's network of automated teller machines (ATM) and point of sale (POS) terminals in St Petersburg and Moscow and is being viewed as a pilot for a national roll-out throughout the Russian Federation.
The Banking Production Centre (BPC), IFS' authorised distributor in the Russian Federation, is serving as the prime contractor on the project, overseeing the installation and certification of the system. The first of the two systems, operating on Hewlett Packard hardware and driving a network of devices accepting Visa and Europay cards, will be operational within the next few weeks.
Anatoly Loginov, executive director of BPC comments: "During the last two years SBRF has enjoyed significant growth in its international payment cards business, particularly in the geographic regions of the Russian Federation where the financial crisis of August 1998 devastated local processors. SBRF decided to install TPII in their head-office in order to handle a rapidly increasing number of regional transactions and manage their country-wide ATM network."
This decision was based on their long-term experience with TPII at the largest card operation of Moscow Savings Bank who have been using the product since 1996, says Loginov. A second new license for the regional processing center in St. Petersburg signals that the rollout of TPII based solutions in regional SBRF banks has finally started, he adds.