UniCredit Bulbank won the prestigious European award Best Initiative to Capitalise on Your Core Business from Visa Europe for development strategy for contactless payment. Andrea Casini, UniCredit Bulbank COO and Mariana Velikova-Chausheva, Head of Cards Department received the award during an official ceremony in Barcelona within the Visa Futures conference. The prize was handed by Visa Europe CEO Nicolas Huss and Berna Ulman, Visa Europe's Business Development Manager South East Europe. UniCredit Bulbank is the first Bulgarian bank to receive an award from Visa European contest.

UniCredit follows a consistent policy of developing and implementing innovations and won the first place in another Visa contest category. Yapi Kredi in Turkey received the Best Innovation of the Year award.

“We are honoured to be awarded in such a prestigious contest on a European level. Meanwhile, this means we have to take responsibility to continue working on our development strategy for contactless payment, so our clients can receive the highest quality services”, said Mariana Velikova-Chausheva, UniCredit Bulbank Head of Cards Department. The bank reports continuous increase of use of contactless cards throughout the whole country. The launch of new subway lines to Business Park Sofia and Sofia Airport gave a new opportunity for further development of new contactless payments project. Special ticketing machines for single trip tickets or topping up 10-trip electronic cards were placed in the new subway stations.

Recently UniCredit Bulbank won the Best Banking Product Award for 2014 with V Pay Contactless card. With just one move V Pay debit card turns paying into pleasure – it is easy and fast.

The V Pay card is the most secure card in the world. Payments are carried out with a chip technology and PIN code. This is the only card, whose magnetic stripe does not contain financial information. So far, there are no reports of misuse of the card. You can shop online safely, hotel reservations, rent a car, airplane ticket, etc. with V Pay. This card is set out to be the evolution of card payments security.

UniCredit Bulbank FOR innovations:

UniCredit Bulbank follows a consistent policy of developing and implementing innovations to the benefit of its clients.

The most significant internationally recognized project of the Bank in the field of new technologies is the opening of the first Branch of the Future in Central and Eastern Europe. Recently UniCredit opened also an International Corporate Centre, which combines innovative approach, digital environment and a wide range of services with high added value for existing and future international clients of the bank with the largest number of assets in the country.

The Bank encourages youth's creative approach in the field of innovations through the UniCredit App Challenge competition. UniCredit Bulbank's customers use the most advanced mobile banking as well as a full range of contactless payment cards. The Bank constantly wins awards for its achievements in the field of innovations and development of new technologies.

Further information for clients:

UniCredit Bulbank, Call Centre

Phone number: 0700 1 84 84

More information for media:

UniCredit Bulbank, Identity & Communications Department

Viktoria Blajeva, Phone: + 359 2 9264 993, wjlj/ebwjepwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Magdalena Ivanova, Phone: + 359 2 9232 528, nbhebmfob/jwbopwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch