Is State Issued Morenocard About To Replace Intl Cards?

[camberiu]

Nice move, forcing Visa and Mastercard to leave the country. Better to leave the credit card business in the capable hands of the government. Now every time you say something against Cristina, PUM! A charge of 5,000 USD will be added to your credit card and no one will explain why nor customer service will pick up the phone so you can request to cancel it.

 

[CarryOn]

Agree completely, I will also eat my shoes if this gets put into action.

Here's how this could be playing out in actual fact.

1. Supermarkets are largely honouring the price controls (although "creative shelving" seems to be their way to minimize impacts). Shortages, etc. for now aren't a big issue, but the margins are being erroded by inflation. Supermarkets are making less profit on items, but still being charged same % by banks for credit cards - they want some relief as a 1-2% reduction could erase the losses from inflation via price controls.

2. Moreno, either strategically to send a signal, or hamfistedly after floating a crazy idea in a pre-briefing to the meeting, suggest the MorenoCard idea. Supermarkets are at least somewhat amenable if they get their rate cut.

3. Gets media coverage, and supermarkets temper their public response. Banks and chinos freak out for obvious and justifiable reasons. The impact on daily life could be tremendously negative, and make things a lot worse.

4. Banks don't want to see all that revenue from credit card use in supermarkets evaporate, so they get together with the supermarkets and offer to cut the rate to, say, 1.5% for business subject to price controls. A bit higher than the government, but no cost to implement, change technology, angry customers being alienated, etc.

5. Banks and supermarkets announce agreement and supermarkets push Moreno off the idea (he'll probably have a new crazy one by then anyway), which probably would have taken an enormous amount of political capital and time to get off the ground (inc. legislation) at a time when CFK & co have precious little on hand with more nationwide marches being scheduled ala 21N that might bridge middle and working class for the first time.

 

[Gringoboy]

You have a point there Mr Carry-on.
In my view, this would be political suicide so better to release a balloon and watch the effect.

 

[glasgowjohn]

Here is the first ad for the Moreno Kard !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPPE2RiYhNg&feature=youtu.be

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Here is the first ad for the Moreno Kard !!

Can you buy a pistol with it?

 

[Gringoboy]

Has this story still got legs? The Diktator Kard I mean.
If so, how exactly would they implement it?
A mad rush to Banco Nacion?
One day you can use your Visa and the next?
I just can't see it happening...................

 

[Jaredberryman]

This is Argentina folks. Anything can happen. Think it won't happen? Well, it just might.

 

[Dublin2BuenosAires]

Working in IT I have launched a few credit card products and launched a few remittance/payment clearing platforms, unless serious work has happened already and bin numbers have been assigned and cards printed nothing will be launched this year, between the physical work and the tech development and testing in integration with various institutions I would guess that 18 months would be a quick and hiccup free project,

If we see the cards in use this year then we know this idea isn't new and the wheels have been in motion previously.

Am starting to come round to the idea that this is a stick to beat various people with.

 

[ndcj]

Working in IT I have launched a few credit card products and launched a few remittance/payment clearing platforms, unless serious work has happened already and bin numbers have been assigned and cards printed nothing will be launched this year, between the physical work and the tech development and testing in integration with various institutions I would guess that 18 months would be a quick and hiccup free project,

If we see the cards in use this year then we know this idea isn't new and the wheels have been in motion previously.

There is already a fully functioning, integrated and up and running payment network that the government operates. The Argenta card is a purchasing card issued to jubilados by ANSES. Also, the national and provincial governments, through their state owned banks, also control a debit card/ATM network (LINK).

http://argenta.anses.gob.ar/

I don't imagine it would be a stretch to leverage this existing infrastructure. ANSES is probably the natural entity to manage the issue of the cards too, just the same as it has done for Argenta and also did in the beginning for SUBE.

 

[Dublin2BuenosAires]

There is already a fully functioning, integrated and up and running payment network that the government operates. The Argenta card is a purchasing card issued to jubilados by ANSES. Also, the national and provincial governments, through their state owned banks, also control a debit card/ATM network (LINK).

http://argenta.anses.gob.ar/

I don't imagine it would be a stretch to leverage this existing infrastructure. ANSES is probably the natural entity to manage the issue of the cards too, just the same as it has done for Argenta and also did in the beginning for SUBE.

Leverage the infrastructure ? How do you leverage the infrastructure to create x millions physical cards and register a new banking entity on all the systems you have mentioned.

All this takes development and testing, I know from experience of some of the managers inside ANSES that any new implementation is a lengthy process as no change managers are appointed, you get lumped with the job on top of your existing job, no project teams appointed. This is how SAP was painfully implemented in ANSES.

Leverage the infrastructure is pretty much the norm for financial institutions, greenfield development is pretty rare these days in terms of extending existing functions (i.e card issuing), generally the backbone exists and some small dev is required to accept new cards....the arse pain stems mainly from documentation and testing, Development is generally the smallest part of the project in lapsed time, documentation and subsequent levels of testing internal (anses or whoever) and external will suck up months and months..esp where more than one party is involved.....even in the circumstance where something exists which is configurable to accept a whole new range of cards, bin numbers etc, documentation and testing will suck up a lot of time. Believe me, I have done the very same in countries more advanced and organised than here in terms of change management, even the smallest projects take 8 months, something on this scale? Way more. Factor in some fairly extensive security auditing in terms data security in rest and transmission....more time.

Neither sube nor argenta popped up overnight!