Price is one of the first things merchants ask about

CREDIT CARD transactions should get faster and more accurate – and eventually cheaper – with the entry into the market of FBME Card Services Ltd (FBMECS), a fully-owned subsidiary of locally-licensed FBME Bank Ltd.
FBMECS CEO Guy El Khoury said that over the years, his company – which is headquartered in Cyprus and provides credit card and other card-related services to clients worldwide – has been “hard at work” with the aim of providing a completely independent network for its Visa and Mastercard customers.
This means it will be able to compete directly with JCC, currently the only company offering credit card processing in Cyprus, for both online and merchant transactions.
El Khoury said that his company’s new transaction processing system has been live for about six months, undergoing extensive technical and market testing before it is formally launched in the  near future.
Asked whether these services will be cheaper, El Khoury said that “pricing in Cyprus has been dictated by the past”, and although there is some scope for immediate improvement, “unfortunately we don’t have much room for improving tremendously the value to a merchant. However, we are working on various ways to improve it, and we will. There is a movement in Europe to bring rates down, and we intend to bring this movement to Cyprus too.”
He added: “Price is definitely one of the first things all merchants ask about, but it’s also about the quality of the service, its speed and the element of security.” So in the short term, the aim is to have “shorter queue times and faster product” while maintaining high quality standards, as increasing numbers of people move towards cashless transactions.
FBMECS will be marketing its new transaction processing system and related products – including online services – through the company IMSP, which has already started to build a substantial client list.
Speaking at the formal announcement of the company’s certification in accordance with the ISO/IEC 27001:2005 international standard – which specifies the requirements for all aspects of setting up and running a high-quality documented management system for information security – El Khoury said that the software for the new system was written in Cyprus and has been certified by Visa and Mastercard.
Cyprus Chambers of Commerce & Industry (KEVE) President Manthos Mavromatis congratulated FBMECS for achieving a very important ISO certification. He added that KEVE especially values the upgrading of all services provided by Cypriot companies, because “offering high quality services and upgrading your products is the best way for the development of the Cypriot economy in general and the provision of Cypriot services in particular.”
FBME Group Chairman Ayoub Farid Saab said that he is happy to see FBMECS enter the local credit card services market and create “clean and healthy” competition, “because it is important to maintain the quality of competition in a market.” He added: “It’s easy to hit below the belt, but that is not a game we want to play.”