EuroPlanet, Euronet Worldwide's joint venture in Serbia, has signed up Razvojna banka Banja Luka to its EFT outsourcing services - its tenth client in the region.
With this latest agreement, EuroPlanet has contracts with seven banks in Serbia and Montenegro and three in Bosnia Hercegovina.
The joint venture was established in 2002 between Euronet Worldwide, Serbian retail bank Komercijalna banka, and local IT services firm Arius. Euronet has the largest stake in EuroPlanet with a 36 per cent share.
As of July 2003, 50 ATMs, 76,000 debit cards and 312 POS terminals are being operated from EuroPlanet's processing centre in Belgrade. The firm estimates it now services 40 per cent of ATMs in the Serbian market and 30 per cent of cards in the Serbia and Montenegro market.
EuroPlanet is the first firm to offer both MasterCard/Europay and Visa issuing and acquiring services in the region. The vendor's EFT network uses Euronet's Integrated Transaction Management software for card transactions and ATM and point-of-sale (POS) payments processing. Services such as bill payment, mobile top-ups and loyalty programmes are also included.
Miro Bergman, Euronet Worldwide executive vice president, EMEA region, and EuroPlanet board member, says: "Serbia and Montenegro, a market of 10 million people with a virtually undeveloped bankcard and EFT industry, is on the verge of tremendous growth and this joint venture has quickly established itself as a leading service provider."