The Treasury of the Republic of Cyprus has chosen Viva.com to process electronic payments made to the state, Cypriot and trade media reported on August 24, 2026. The payment volume is expected to exceed €1.5 billion a year. The award ends a tender that opened in January 2022 and ousts JCC Payment Systems, the Cypriot card processor that has run the service since 2010.
The contract covers direct taxes, vehicle license renewals, social insurance contributions, traffic fines, fees for public services, and municipal charges. These payments run through a single gateway, the Payment Gateway of the gov.cy portal, to which government departments connect their payment forms.
Cards, account-to-account payments, and terminals
- Multichannel payment processing, by card and by account-to-account transfer.
- The processing engine behind the gov.cy Payment Gateway.
- Smart Checkout, Viva.com’s online checkout, for remote payments.
- Supply, installation, and maintenance of the physical terminals in public offices, using Tap on Any Device technology, which turns a phone or tablet into a point of acceptance.
An account-to-account (A2A) payment is a transfer initiated from the payer’s bank account without going through a card network. It belongs in a government collection contract because of cost. A transfer is usually priced per transaction, whatever the amount, while card acceptance is partly charged as a percentage of the transaction. That weighs on large payments such as taxes and social contributions.
| Bidder | Lot 1 | Lot 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Viva.com, through VivaBank Single-Member Banking Company S.A. | €3.92M | €172,942 |
| JCC Payment Systems Ltd | €4.45M | €522,821 |
Appeals held up the award for four years
Viva.com, through VivaBank, submitted the lower bid on both lots. The procedure was then held up by a series of legal challenges from bidders. The Tenders Review Authority said the procurement had taken an unusually long time, with appeals both upheld and rejected along the way. It dismissed the last one, filed by JCC on April 8, 2026, on July 15, 2026.
The contract runs 67 months in total, or about five and a half years. That includes a month of preparation, four to six months of integration, 36 months of core services, and two optional 12-month extensions. The contracting party is VivaBank Single-Member Banking Company S.A., the group’s banking entity.
Viva.com builds a public sector business
Viva.com is a Greek payments company backed by its own bank, VivaBank, and says it operates in 31 European countries. Harry Xenophontos, its chief business officer, described the deal as centralizing the state’s payment collection. “This means a more convenient way for citizens to pay, while reducing the state’s cost of electronic transactions,” he said.
The Cyprus award follows another public contract. In July 2026, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) picked European Dynamics and Viva.com to build and run the central payment platform for the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The mechanism entered its definitive phase on January 1, 2026, and certificate sales are due to start on February 1, 2027, in all 27 EU member states.