PLASTIC AND FLEXIBLE (THE Company, №5, February 9, 2004)

A Nizhny Novgorod company NovaCard has been admitted to manufacture plastic cards of both international payment systems Visa and MasterCard at once. It is the first case in Russia. To this day only a Moscow company Rozan Finance had the right to stamp Visa cards. This company does its business by means of closeness to Bank of Moscow and its project «Social card of a Moscow resident» (this fact is rather minus in the eyes of bank-rivals). And foreign manufacturers turned out to be the main suppliers of plastics for the domestic financial institutions. NovaCard has rather ambitious plans: the company is going to seize minimum 30% of the market of production for Russian banks for 2004.

The residents of Nizhny Novgorod see their competitive advantage in «flexible tariff and production policy». In contradiction from foreign manufacturers they are ready to start working even with very small batches and re-enlisted orders, changing cards’ design already in the production process. But the main advantage of the domestic plastics is the economy by means of customs duties and costs for transportation.

Today Visa and MasterCard are negotiating about the production of cards with several Russian enterprises else. However, no one of them conforms to the strict requirements of the international payment systems in the question of safety.