Turkish Provus Services Provider has bought local card operator RomCard from its shareholders BCR, BRD, Raiffeisen Bank, UniCredit Tiriac Bank and Financiara, according to Deloitte, which assisted the sale along with the Reff & Associates team. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

The new entity will provide card-processing services to both domestic and cross-border clients. Provus manages over 1,500 ATM terminals, 4,500 POS terminals, 2.8 million cards and 3.5 million transactions per month.

RomCard was the first card processing services provider in Romania and was set up 16 years ago.

t began to operate as an interbank processing centre for five Romanian banks (also its shareholders): BCR, Romanian Foreign Trade Bank (Bancorex), Romanian Bank for Development (BRD), the Agriculture Bank and Ion Tiriac Bank. Starting 2000, due to changes in the banking sector, the shareholder structure of RomCard became: Romanian Commercial Bank (BCR), Romanian Bank for Development (BRD Societe Generale), Raiffeisen Bank, Unicredit Tiriac Bank and Financiara SA, with the share capital being equally divided between the five entities.

During the 2006-2009 period, the company recorded a 22% percent growth in turnover, from RON 3.1 million in 2006 to RON 5.62 million in 2009 (the equivalent of around EUR 1.3 million).

Romania was Provus' first international expansion phase. The group expanded with operations in five countries. In 2007, Turkish private equity firm Turkven became its majority shareholder.

CS