National Bank of Uzbekistan plans to provide the service 'Verified by Visa'

For more than 20 years, the National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of Uzbekistan holds the leading position in the issuance of plastic cards and services. By April 1 this year the number of cards in circulation amounted to about 2.1 million pieces, out of which more than 650 thousand cards of a new "online" system and 85 thousand - the international Visa cards. Number of serviced companies whose employees are paid on plastic cards accounts for more than 13,5 thousand.

National Bank installed more than 18 thousand payment terminals, through which for 3 months of this year transactions totaling about 9 billion soums were carried out, in the same period more than 1.1 trillion soums were transferred on plastic cards.

On April 1, 2015 the sum of balances on accounts opened for soum plastic cards amounted to 223.6 billion soums, and on international cards - $20.6 million.

- National Bank aims to make plastic cards not only a convenient tool in the calculations for the customer, but also for receiving additional services. The possibility of informing customers about transactions on their accounts was introduced, including card ones, in the form of SMS-messages to mobile phones, e-mail-notification on e-mail addresses, as well as through personal Web- and IVR-offices. Number of users of these services up to now exceeds 110 thousand, including the users of the "on-line" cards. In addition, since last year the bank's customers can take advantage of CLICK system, which allows paying for services of mobile operators, local and international telephone services, as well as utilities in "on-line" mode. I would like to note that from April this year, the service became available to holders of «off-line» cards of DUET system, - told Eugene Nam, the chief of department dealing with the international payment systems and commercial banks of the republic on the organization of interbank plastic cards settlements of the Division of monetary circulation of NBU FEA to our correspondent.

In the near future, the National Bank plans to further develop the infrastructure for serving the holders of plastic cards, including by increasing the number of ATMs and kiosks. In particular, this year it is scheduled to install 15 new ATMs and 50 kiosks, and increase their total number to 137 and 172 respectively. In addition, it is planned to introduce a number of innovations for the users of international Visa cards: issue Visa chip cards in the program, which will improve the safety of operations, reduce the risk of data being compromised.

By connecting to information services, customers will receive a notification in the form of SMS messages about authorizations operations on their Visa cards on mobile phones, or email, as well as through personal Web- and IVR-offices.

According to the program of service of international cards it is also planned to modernize the terminal fleet by replacing old equipment with a new one that will provide the service of cards of leading payment systems such as VISA and MasterCard.

- For those who like shopping in cyber space, bank will provide new service «Verified by Visa», which allows to make secure transactions in online stores based on technology 3D-Secure, for which the customer is given a special password to operate in a secure environment. The advantage of this service is a higher level of security.

I would like to emphasize that in the framework of the implementation of e-commerce, trade and service companies are provided the opportunity to connect to the specified service to realize their goods and services through the Internet. The above mentioned direction is a new one in the country, and will be expanded at the expense of coverage of not only export-oriented producers of goods but also hotel complexes, travel agencies, agencies for the sale of air and railway tickets, etc, - said Eugene Nam.

It should be added that the bank is developing a special application to the owners of smartphones, which in addition to the remote control of card account, will allow to perform a number of remote operations with the card, such as lock / unlock the account, receive mini-statements, information on the last five transactions, balance check, etc.

UzReport