UETS Wins $1.2 Million Smart Card Contract from Iraqi Government

Net 1 Ueps Technologies announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Net1 Universal Electronic Technological Solutions (UETS), has received an order for a further US$1.2 million Universal Electronic Payment System (UEPS)-enabled smart cards. NUETS expects the delivery of these cards to commence towards the end of September 2010 at the rate of 200,000 cards per month.

Since the project's inception in August 2008, and including this new order, NUETS will have provided a total of 3.45 million UEPS smart cards to the Iraqi consortium for the distribution and payment of government grants to war victims, government pensioners and beneficiaries of the Ministry of Women affairs, as well as salary and wage payments to employees of the two Iraqi state banks.

"We are extremely pleased and excited about the significant and accelerating progress made by our partners since the inception of our UEPS technology in Iraq," said Brenda Stewart, MD of NUETS. "Our UEPS system is now fully operational in all the branches of both Rashid and Rafidain banks. In addition, an operational exercise is currently underway to evaluate how cash merchants could assist in alleviating the operational pressure being encountered in bank branches during payment cycles."

More than 1.5 million UEPS smart cards have been issued to beneficiaries to date with monthly grant payments reaching 600,000 beneficiaries per month, as payments are effected by Government on alternative months.

Within the next month, a pilot project involving Net1's "Offline Smart Card Registration" application for issuing smart cards to military personnel will be initiated, followed by the distribution of the associated monthly salary/wages payments on the UEPS cards. This new card order includes 400,000 cards which have been set aside for the payment of military wages.