Post event report

May 22, 2007

BPC Banking Technologies, the recognized provider of SmartVista e-payment solution for the global financial industry, has just participated in the recent Card-EX 2007 Conference held in Cairo, Egypt from 6 to 8 May 2007 and Cards and Payment Middle East 2007 Exhibition held in Dubai, UAE from 13 to 15 May 2007. The events were perfect forums to increase the Middle East’s market awareness of the SmartVista suite of products and to showcase its features and capabilities to delegates from the region.

The General Manager of BPC Middle East and Africa, James Massey, presented his white paper on Islamic Card Processing to a packed audience in Cairo. Looking into differences between Islamic and Classical card processing, he also described the features of SmartVista that enable the processing of Islamic cards in their variety of forms. The audience response was very positive with many detailed questions, both at the podium and after the conference session, “This is clearly becoming one of the hot topics in the region,” said James, “and it clearly shows that the flexibility of SmartVista is needed to meet the different requirements of banks from Asia and the Middle East.”

In contrast BPC were exhibiting at Cards & Payments Middle East for the fifth time, with its largest stand at this event yet, they were able to do live demonstrations of SmartVista Front-End and SmartVista Back-Office systems to over 25 organisations in the two days. Mandarr Agshikar, Deputy General Manager, said “This was our busiest event yet and the constant flow of banks interested in the benefits of SmartVista and our new product announcements was evidence of new thinking in the region, where banks are looking to Open Systems as the way forward for enterprise sized financial processing.”

“A lot of interest was shown in the demonstration, especially in the web based interface, and the benefits it can bring to customers in terms of lower cost of ownership, however the exhibition was a great event for meeting key players in the region” said James Massey. A team of professional consultants from the Moscow office helped their BPC Middle East colleagues to make demonstrations of SmartVista functionality and to present the solution benefits to the targeted audience. 

The both events were attended by card operations heads, product managers, as well IT managers from various parts of Middle East and Africa region, from Mali in the west to Iran in the east and from Turkey in the north to Oman in the south. During the events, BPC also established new opportunities for alliance with other vendors and solution providers from across the region.

Both Card-EX and Cards and Payments Middle East are annual events that address different aspects of the card processing value chain, aimed at maximizing the profitability of card portfolios of all types, including new products, technologies and innovations, cross-selling, risk management, and outsourcing for various cards including debit, credit, and prepaid. This year’s agendas focused on building flexible resilient payment infrastructures as well as protecting and growing cards revenues.