Mastercard, Transact Pro, and the Municipality of Jelgava bring City Key™ cards to Latvia for the first time
Mastercard has partnered with Transact Pro, a leading Latvian non-banking financial service provider and digital currency institution, as well as the largest non-banking Mastercard payment card issuer in the Baltics, and the Municipality of Jelgava to roll out the new Mastercard City Key™ card solution in Latvia for the first time.
The Mastercard City Key™ will serve as an identity tool for residents, and a way to receive services, benefits and allowances. It will also function as a Mastercard payment card. For Jelgava, this solution will help boost effectiveness for administration, accounting and management of benefits for its citizens.
Following its launch in September, the multi-purpose City Key™ card will provide Jelgava residents with several benefits, including the ability to use it as an identification card to access municipal facilities and as a tool for social benefit disbursements.
The launch of City Key™ in Jelgava is the result of a strong partnership with the city and their membership in the City Possible global network, pioneered by Mastercard. Launched four years ago, in 2018, the network focuses on solving urban challenges through collaboration.
City Possible has grown exponentially since its launch in 2018, evolving from 16 founding members to a global ecosystem of over 330 participating and candidate cities. The network also features a growing number of other European cities including Prague, Athens, Dublin and Warsaw among others.
Johan Modenius, SVP Financial Instiutions Nordics and Baltics at Mastercard said: “We are proud to be a part of this fantastic project that deploys our City Key™ solution. We believe this will serve as a critical tool that will improve the everyday life of residents in Jelgava.”
The City Key™ card complies with all the requirements of the Unified Relief Information System Law and Law on Electronic Identification of Natural Persons, which provides establishment of an electronic identification system for beneficiaries in the country.
Furthermore, Mastercard’s long-standing commitment to privacy, data responsibility and security means that we only collect the information we need to get the job done and are transparent about the ways we use it. We embed multiple layers of privacy and security safeguards into the design of our innovations, while making sure products such as City Key™ are convenient and easy to use.
The first wave of cards in Jelgava will be distributed to students over the summer, while the second wave will be issued to pensioners in October.
Andris Rāviņš, Chairman of Jelgava City Council, commented: “We are building Jelgava as a smart city, where new smart technologies are regularly introduced. We are proud that Jelgava is the first Latvian municipality to implement the Mastercard City Key™ project, making it significantly easier for our residents to receive municipal services.”
"The uniqueness of this solution is that, with one card, Jelgava residents can perform several important functions: receive municipal social benefits and discounts, receive discounts at any merchant where Mastercard is accepted, use the card as a means of identification, and deliver loop payments. We are proud that Jelgava is the first Latvian city ready to offer this solution to its residents,” said Artūrs Žogots, the representative of the Business Development Department of Transact Pro.
In Latvia, the initial roll-out of the Mastercard City Key™ solution will be extended to other cities by the end of 2022.
“Currently, we are in active discussions with other local governments about the benefits of Mastercard City Key™, and we are sure that more local governments in Latvia will soon want to implement this solution,” comments Artūrs Žogots.
About Transact Pro
Transact Pro is the leader of the Latvian market in the non-banking financial services sector. It is the first company in Latvia to operate in this sector, licensed to provide the services in each European Union member state as an electronic money institution by the Latvian Financial and Capital Market Commission, which grants it the right to provide the payment services listed under the license. Transact Pro is a principal member of Visa and Mastercard, and owns an in-house payment processing center and a proprietary PCI DSS 1 compliant payment gateway. More information: www.transactpro.eu