Viva faces Bank of Cyprus holdout in four-bank IRIS rollout

Viva.com accused Bank of Cyprus of delaying a Cypriot government payments project awarded to Viva in an August tender, after four banks backed its IRIS proposal, Protothema said in a news article Oct. 21.

For Cyprus, the dispute matters because Bank of Cyprus is the only major lender cited as uncommitted, while it holds a 70% stake in JCC Payment Systems, described by Protothema as the previous provider.

Viva won the contract to provide electronic transaction-processing services for the Cypriot government after the tender, according to the article. The company then began implementing the project and proposed DIAS’s IRIS e-commerce system as the processing infrastructure.

Protothema said NBG Cyprus, Eurobank Cyprus, Alpha Bank Cyprus and Ancoria Bank have confirmed participation in the IRIS solution proposed by Viva.com. Cyprus’s main banks already participate in DIAS for SEPA instant credit transfers, the article said; SEPA is the European framework for euro-denominated bank transfers.

The article said Viva set out its complaints about Bank of Cyprus in a letter to the Cypriot government. It did not report a response from Bank of Cyprus or give the bank’s reasons for not committing to the proposed system.

Protothema also cited unnamed sources as linking a four-year delay in awarding the project to Viva.com to objections by JCC Payment Systems.

The Cypriot dispute comes as instant-payment systems draw greater attention in Greece. Protothema separately said person-to-person transfers through Greece’s IRIS system have reached almost €18 billion since launch, with most of that volume occurring over the past six years.

No timetable for Bank of Cyprus to decide on participation, or for the Cypriot government rollout to be completed, was reported in the article.

Source: news article, Protothema, Oct. 21