In 1994, NovaCard was the first company in Russia to begin production of plastic cards. Today it is the leader in this market sector across Russia, the CIS, and in Eastern Europe.

It all began when seven like-minded individuals rented a room in the Institute of applied physics at the Academy of Science. They purchased their first equipment for producing personalised plastic cards and earned contracts for the production of discount cards for shopping centres, restaurants and clubs. In 1994, NovaCard also began to produce cards for the Golden Crown Russian payment system and, in 1996 Union Card. Gradually, as the company developed, increasingly hi-tech industrial equipment was purchased and production of more complicated and larger orders began.

In 1997 with the expansion of the telecommunications market NovaCard began to produce mobile communication payment cards, primarily for the first Russian GSM-operator – Mobile Communication of Nizhny Novgorod, and then for the largest mobile operators in Russia – Beeline and MTS.

As the company built on its experience it developed the expertise to produce the bank cards for international payment systems. However, in order to gain Visa International and MasterCard International certification the company needed its own highly secure development and production facility. In 2001 the company took over ownership of the Romodanovsky ex-railway station building.

The Romodanovsky (Kazan) station in Nizhny Novgorod was built in 1902-1904 and was rightly considered as one of the most beautiful buildings in the city. The station closed at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1993 the old building was listed as an architectural monument, but this did not save it from falling into disrepair and it slowly started to flood as its waterproofing failed.

Restoration and reconstruction took two years. During this period the detail of the railway station building was restored using old photographs and drawings.

In 2003 the whole manufacturing facility was moved to the new building without even interrupting production. Certainly, the manufacturing plant could have been located in an ordinary factory, but Vladimir Krupnov, the Director of NovaCard, believes that the move was worth it: “Millions of people came through this railway station. This place harbours their sorrows, happiness, meetings and partings. It would be a huge loss to have allowed this beautiful building to fall into ruin”.

In January 2004 NovaCard became the first plant in Russia, certified by Visa and MasterCard. In October of the same year the company became a partner of Oberthur Card Systems, an international leader in designing solutions based on smart-cards, and a partner of the largest supplier of cards for Visa and MasterCard.

In 2007, NovaCard was the first company to acquire rights for the production American Express cards. In 2010, NovaCard was the producer certified for the production of 3D Visa ProMotion® cards for Europe, and began manufacturing this new generation of bank cards with three-dimensional moving-picture effects.

In April 2012, NovaCard was tested by independent auditors for compliance with the requirements of the standards of SAS (Security Accreditation Scheme), and in August was awarded a certificate for production of MasterCard® PayPass™ cards, and was the first Russian company to produced NFC-SIM-cards incorporating the MasterCard PayPass payment application for the innovative MTS and MTS-Bank project.

Today the company numbers amongst its clients over three hundred Russian and foreign banks. NovaCard also cooperates with the leading GSM-mobile operators. Large retail chains, insurance companies, medical institutions, shops, restaurants, hotels and entertainment centres all make use of NovaCard s products. During recent years NovaCard has been taking part in government programmes and in the production of social cards for regions of the Russian Federation in partnership with Russian banks, using a variety of payment systems. More than five million social cards of different types were produced for over twenty regions of Russia.

Right from the time of its foundation the company has applied the best techniques in world production expertise. Thanks to nearly twenty years working experience, the professional team at NovaCard is able to offer our clients not only today s products but solutions for tomorrow.