ItzCash: More Than A Smart Card

Imagine a prepaid card that’s fully convertible in value. Surprised? But this is not just a mobile card; it’s the ItzCash card from Intrex India, an Essel Group company.

ItzCash is a multipurpose prepaid card that enables daily shopping equivalent to the value of the card denomination. For instance, if the cardholder buys a Rs 250 card, he can use the entire value of the card. It can also be used for online shopping, booking railway and movie tickets, paying utility bills, making donations, recharging mobiles etc.

The plastic card has an embedded hologram, which when scratched reveals a 16-digit account number and password. The company’s distribution channel is responsible for increasing the network of shop owners selling the cards. “The card was floated in 2002 and since then we’ve sold around one crore of them and garnered about 30-40 lakh customers,” said Prakash Pawar, CTO and Head, HRD & Operations, Intrex India.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

Conducting a transaction with the card is simple. For example, if a cardholder wants to buy a railway ticket worth Rs 600, he can log on to www.irctc.com and select the cash card option. Subsequently, he will be routed to the ItzCash website, where he is asked for the login ID and Password. The application verifies the information and checks the card balance. After the cardholder has passed the qualification criteria, he’s redirected to the IRCTC site to confirm that the transaction has been completed.
IT-Enabled ItzCash

The ItzCash system runs on an application that’s been built in-house – CVMS (Cash Voucher Management System). It consists of four Dell PowerEdge rack-mountable servers that have Xeon processors with 4 GB RAM. The operating system is Red Hat Linux and the servers are secured behind a firewall. The database is Oracle 8i. There are two application servers, one running IBM WebSphere and another running Tomcat. The web server runs Apache httpd.

The servers are located in Essel group’s own IDC (Cyquator Technologies Limited) at the International Infotech Park in Vashi, Navi Mumbai. For additional security, all traffic on the payment gateway is encrypted with SSL and secured with a 128-bit Global Server ID from VeriSign. All modules used for backend operations, as well as by the call centre and merchants, have an additional dongle-based protection.

The ItzCash setup is rated at 1200 transactions/minute. “We’re planning to enhance the current setup to process up to 5000 transactions per minute,” said Pawar. Backups are taken daily as well as weekly, and the backup procedure is completely automated.

The payment gateway has been integrated with many e-commerce websites such as rediff.com, indiatimes.com and irctc.co.in. ItzCash is a viable alternative to a credit card, since the card has a low value and is typically used up after a few transactions. Hence, after getting delivery of the product, the card can be disposed of.
Modular Structure

There are eight modules in the CVMS system, with two more under development. The modules are MyAccount, Call Centre, Redemption, Backend Operations, Refunds and Cancellation, Reporting, Recon File Generation and SMS Processing. User Registration and POS modules are in the offing.

The legal department of the company is in the process of filing a patent for the CVMS. “We’ve already patented the brand name ItzCash,” said Pawar. Along with ERP and BI, the company is also planning to deploy DR, CRM and Data Storage Augmentation solutions.