Viva.com wins the Cypriot state's payments contract, displacing JCC after 16 years

The Treasury of the Republic of Cyprus signed the contract for processing the state's electronic payments with VivaBank Single-Member Banking Company S.A., the Viva.com entity that bid. Viva.com becomes the processing engine behind the gov.cy Payment Gateway, through which citizens and businesses pay direct taxes, vehicle licence renewals, social insurance contributions, traffic fines and fixed penalties, government fees and municipal charges, by card and by account-to-account transfer; the package also covers a Smart Checkout front end and the procurement, installation and maintenance of POS terminals using Tap on Any Device.

Managed volume is expected to exceed EUR 1.5bn a year. The term is 67 months: one month of technical preparation, four to six months to connect the systems, 36 months of core service and two optional 12-month extensions. Viva.com bid EUR 3.92m plus EUR 172,942 against incumbent JCC Payment Systems Ltd at EUR 4.45m plus EUR 522,821.

The tender opened on 7 January 2022; the Tenders Board awarded it to VivaBank on 20 March 2026, JCC appealed on 8 April and the appeal was dismissed on 15 July 2026. JCC has run the existing system since 2010.

A national public sector is one of the few acceptance estates that changes hands whole, and this one moves from a bank-owned domestic processor to a pan-European challenger acquirer. It is Viva.com's second public-sector mandate in two months, after the European Commission selected it in July 2026 to build the central payment platform for the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which makes government acceptance look like a deliberate route to scale rather than a one-off win.

The shape of the bid matters too: account-to-account alongside cards, and terminals delivered as Tap on Any Device rather than dedicated hardware, is the model challenger acquirers are using to underbid incumbents whose economics assume a device estate.

Whether the gateway goes live inside the four-to-six-month connection window, how much of the EUR 1.5bn settles as A2A rather than on cards once both are offered at the same checkout, whether JCC seeks further legal remedy, and whether Viva.com converts the same public-sector pitch in other European markets.

• cyprus-mail.com