Unified Payment Collection System (UPCS)
The Unified Payment Collection System is a unique technology allowing convenient nationwide payments for subscribers of various regional carriers.
The UPCS integrates the payment networks of various regional operators, their affili-ates, and terminals of external payment systems (e.g. banks, supermarkets). A sub-scriber can make payments in another carrier’s coverage (via the telco’s cash desk by bankcard or cash, or via an external payment system using any available payment tool).
Moreover, this technology enables all operations with scratch cards that are unified across the operation area. A subscriber can purchase a scratch card from another op-erator and activate it in the third operator’s coverage (e.g. by calling CBOSSacc number, common to all regional operators).
The UPCS allows automated interactions between regional carriers operating CBOSSbcc and other UPCS users (banks, payment system operators, etc.), provides prompt registration of payments made in national roaming and interconnection settlements between the UPCS users. The Unified Payment Collection System meets the strictest requirements to reliability and data delivery speed.
System Operation
The UPCS is organized as a two-layered system (similar to a payment or clearing sys-tem). The upper level is occupied by the UPCS coordinator, i.e. the settlement center (SC) enabling interconnect settlements between all UPCS users. The main SC constituents are:
- Emission Center (EC) allowing scratch card emission, distribution among opera-tors, and accounting
- Authorization Center (AuC) enabling scratch card authorization (i.e. the PIN and scratch card authenticity check), registration of failed authorization attempts, black lists of subscribers, and scratch card accounting
- Routing Center (RC) that is actually a storage of the UPCS numbering capacity. It allows identifying the subscriber’s home operator by his phone number and rout-ing notifications exchanged between the UPCS user billing systems.
- Accounting Center (AcC) that settles accounts of the UPCS users, manages their financial claims and commitments, and enables interconnect settlements.
The SC functions belong to one of the regional operators, i.e. the coordinator. The Au-thorization and Emission Centers are subsystems of the coordinator’s CBOSSbcc.
The UPCS user billing systems exchange messages through a transport system. Mes-sages are generated automatically upon any subscriber or UPCS user action, or after any automatic operation (e.g. upon receipt of a message requesting the scratch card authorization, the system sends a message to the Authorization Center requesting to allow authorization). The incoming message triggers the corresponding procedure in the target system (e.g. upon receipt of a Authorization Center’s message commanding to recharge the account, the top-up procedure is launched). The list of available mes-sages can be added to with system expansion.
Different payment methods are enabled by various CBOSSbcc options.
CBOSSbcc option: UPCS – Cash Payments
The option allows the UPCS subscribers to make cash payments (payments by bank-cards are enabled by integration with CBOSSccp) to recharge their accounts in any UPCS payment office. The registration of payment to another operator remains simple both to subscribers and CBOSSbcc users. The changes solely concern the internal mechanisms retrieving subscriber information.
CBOSSbcc option: UPCS – Scratch Card Emission Center, Authorization Center
The Emission and Authorization Centers support all scratch card related operations and provide a simple and convenient way of account top-up away from the payment office.
This option includes specialized CBOSSbcc modules to be installed at the UPCS coor-dinator.
Emission center
The Emission Center manages scratch card production, accounting, and distribution among the USP users. Moreover, the emission center controls payments from regional operators for the sold scratch cards.
Authorization center
The Authorization Center handles all further operations. It specifies the list of external systems and their authorizations, sends requested scratch card information, and acti-vates the cards. Moreover, the authorization center monitors and logs all card life cy-cle events (activation, blocking, expiration data, etc.). The system prevents scratch card fraud, i.e. it registers the number of failed attempts to authorize the scratch card (for each subscriber number) and keeps a black subscriber list.
CBOSSbcc option: UPCS – Operations with Scratch Cards via CBOSSbcc modules, CBOSSacc and CBOSSics
This option allows regional operators to register scratch card payments. The technology provides five ways to activate a scratch card, i.e. by a telco’s agent in course of a face-to-face or phone conversation with subscribers, via IVR, web interface, SMS, or USSD.
CBOSSbcc option: UPCS – Payments via External Payment Systems
This option allows regional operators to use UPCS in the terminals of external pay-ment systems located within the operator’s coverage – ATM, POSs in supermarkets, hotels, etc. By making an agreement with a company providing a vast payment collec-tion network, the operator can make payments easier. This option includes modules enabling CBOSSbcc integration with any payment system.
Benefits
- The UPCS provides the online user interaction and prompt payment registration, allows home network quality in roaming. This increases the satisfaction and loy-alty of high-value subscribers – regular roaming service users.
- The regional payment offices, as well as scratch card sales points belonging to re-gional operators, their subsidiaries, dealers, and agents offer subscribers a con-venient way to recharge the account wherever they are. The UPCS technology of-fers easy account top-up in roaming, thus allowing greater revenue from roamers.
