ArCa to introduce American Express payment cards in Armenia

YEREVAN, February 3, /ARKA/. Armenian Card (ArCa) Armenian payment system said it will introduce this year American Express international payment system’s cards.

American Express is one of the three largest international card payment systems along with Visa and MasterCard, Armenian Card executive director Shahen Hovhanesian, told in an interview with ARKA.

He said ArCa has received all necessary certificates and implemented several pilot transactions planing to start issuing these cards in the first half of 2010.

He said the introduction of the new payment system is expected to increase the banks’ turnover which will receive additional profits for servicing new cards, but declined to reveal the name of a bank that has received a license to service these new cards

‘This bank has developed an appropriate business plan and has been granted the exclusive contract to service American Express cards. Under the contract all other banks will be serviced through it,’ he said.

In 2009 ArmCard system -member banks issued 190,346 cards. Also last year 6.8 million transactions were executed by payment cards worth over 331 billion drams.

Armenian Card was founded in 2000 and 20 of 22 Armenian commercial banks are its members, which issue now ArCa Classic, ArCa Gold, ArCa Business, ArCa Affinity, ArCa Co-branded, ArCa Debit и ArCa Platinum cards. It is also a full member of MasterCard Europe, implementing the processing of VISA cards (Third Party Processor). ($1 – 376.03 Drams). -0-