OREANDA-NEWS. September 4, 2008. The Bank of Moscow has launched implementation of a project to introduce an electric Pupil Card in a number of Moscow schools. The previous pilot project included Moscow general educational schools of the North-Western Area of the Russian capital. Initially, the Pupil Card was used as a season ticket for the Metro and as a school entry pass.

Let us recall that, in 2007, for the purpose of broader use of the electronic card’s potential, including its payment application, the Bank of Moscow came out with an initiative to hold an experiment in one Moscow area to introduce a new technology for using the Pupil Card to pay for school meals, and received support from the Moscow government in this. Use of the card’s payment application should simplify payments made by the pupil to the canteen staff, excluding the need for cash to change hands and giving the pupils’ parents an opportunity to pay for meals themselves by means of the card, without the schoolteacher acting as middleman.

The results of the experiment allowed the Bank to take account of all the merits and specifics of the tested technology and to develop a fundamentally new scheme for payment for schools meals using the Pupil Card. This scheme was called an integration scheme, since it united the best developments in this sphere by the Moscow Education Department and Bank of Moscow’s experience of card products and processing of money and information flows. The new technology launched on 1 September 2008 will be available in 194 Moscow schools by the end of the year and subsequently in other 1500 Moscow schools.

Within the scope of the new technology, the Pupil Card will work not only as an instrument for identifying the pupil, but also as a card for making cash-free payment for children’s meals in school canteens.