Acting as both general contractor and systems integrator throughout all realisation stages, the company took overall responsibility for the running of the project which has become the largest among those implemented by BPC in the CIS.

Founded in 1991, the Central Bank of Turkmenistan regulates the country's banking system and supervises the national financial and monetary policy. In order to provide clearing and settlement throughout the country, the bank decided on launching a local payment system - Altyn Asyr - and implementing a fully functional in-house processing center to provide local chip card issuing and acquiring. Having conducted an international tender, the bank opted for the SmartVista software solution, which meets all modern requirements for the implementation of a national payment network. Designed to support all existing EFT standards and technologies, including EMV, SmartVista can be easily extended to any emerging or local electronic payment mechanism. The solution provides clearing and inter-bank settlement, message switching and routing in compliance with the international security standards.

The industry acclaimed set of software products, made up of SmartVista Front-End, SmartVista Back-Office and SmartVista CardGen personalization module, provides local smart cards issuing and acquiring and serves as a reliable platform for a wide range of innovative retail banking products and services. The modern SmartVista based processing infrastructure supports a large variety of transactions made by using self-service terminals, amongst which are payments performance and money transfers to service providers' accounts as well as credit repayments and card-to-card transfers.

To drive retail banking expansion in the country, the Central Bank of Turkmenistan has forward looking plans to get Turkmenistan banks involved in the agent programme, enabling them to issue and acquire Altyn Asyr payment cards.

Broad SmartVista functionality provides a wide range of interfaces to international payment systems, thereby contributing to the bank's further integration into the international community.

"BPC prides itself on superior technologies and services that always fit clients' needs in the ever-changing marketplace. We are particularly proud of the fact that the Central Bank of Turkmenistan opted for the innovative SmartVista software solution to implement a reliable technological platform ensuring further growth of retail banking business and membership in the international payment systems. We look forward to expanding our successful cooperation with the bank in years to come", - said Sergey Lukyanov, BPC Deputy CEO.