FIRST DATA’S LATVIAN BUSINESS DEVELOPS INNOVATIVE SOLUTION FOR THE ELECTRONIC PAYMENT CARDS INDUSTRY

Riga, March 20, 2009: First Data, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment services, has turned a new page in the history of payments processing in the Baltic countries. In the last three months, specialists at First Data have implemented an innovative payment card acquiring solution which has radically changed the daily work of public sector authorities, such as the Road Traffic Safety Directorate (RTSD), and public and private health insurance providers The solution makes it possible for public authority offices to accept card payments and process electronic health insurance cards through point of sale terminals. All these projects had one aspect in common: they required the classification of transaction data in accordance with public authorities’ accounting systems.

Payments to the RTSD typically include fees for services provided, as well as state duties, taxes and even outstanding traffic fines. Thanks to an innovative solution implemented by First Data, payments made to the RTSD using a payment card are now quickly and reliably divided among relevant payees with each party receiving the exact payment due directly to their account, normally within two days. For the RTSD this involves payments between multiple accounts, banks, State Treasury accounts, and more than 70 local governmental departments.

The State Treasury has confirmed its satisfaction with the project. First Data, in cooperation with SEB Bank and Parex Bank, has developed a unique payment card acquiring solution, tailored to meet the specific accounting and budgeting requirements of the State of Latvia. The goal of the project was to make payments easier, more cost efficient and convenient, by enabling customers to make payments directly to the State, for the services offered by public authorities, using their VISA, VISA Electron, MasterCard, Maestro and American Express payment cards to do so. Consumers no longer have to pay additional fees for bank transfers as payments can be made directly at public authorities’ offices.

Like payment cards, Latvian electronic health insurance cards feature a magnetic stripe containing data on the health services available to the cardholder, their insurance limits and balances. Healthcare institutions no longer need to consult handbooks or code lists to find out the scope of services to which a customer is entitled. They simply draw the card through the point of sale terminal slot to find out whether the service is available to this particular client, what their limits are and to confirm the card’s validity. As a result, the health insurance service has become easier for consumers to understand and easier for healthcare providers to administrate. Doctors do not have to fill in reports or provide accounts to the insurer and they can use the time spared to service their customers - the patients.

The insurance company, If Latvia, was the first to implement, in cooperation with First Data, electronic health insurance cards in Latvia. Jānis Kesteris, IT head at If Latvia in the Baltic countries and Russia, said, ‘The solution, which we developed in cooperation with First Data, enables users to automatically process health services and instantly check and approve their customers’ service limits. It is a very economical model for the administration of health insurance and strengthens If Latvia’s position as an innovative provider of services to the insurance industry.”

Receiving and processing this level of detailed payment data was unprecedented in Latvia. Therefore, extra expertise and significant intellectual contribution of our specialists was required in order to develop the solution,” said Zanda Brīvule-Jansone, Managing Director of First Data in the Baltic and Nordic countries.