Regina -- On Wednesday morning, October 22, Credit Union Central of Saskatchewan (CUCS) and Credit Union Electronic Transaction Services (CUETS) will officially launch the first Mondex electronic cash pilot project in Western Canada. The official launch ceremony, scheduled to take place at 10:00 am in the Credit Union Central cafeteria (2055 Albert Street), will highlight a week of training for the approximately 300 Credit Union Central and CUETS employees taking part in the closed pilot.

Pilot participants include Credit Union Central, CUETS, Credit Union Central of Canada, Beaver Foods Cafeteria and ACE Credit Union. ACE serves employees of CUCS, CUETS and other Saskatchewan credit unions, and will manage the Mondex value -- the electronic cash -- for the duration of the pilot.

The project is a "closed" pilot in that everything will take place in one building. Employees who volunteered to participate in the trial have been issued with trial Mondex cards that they can only use to make purchases at the office cafeteria. ACE Credit Union also operates a branch within the building.

Employees will be able to go to ACE Credit Union and ask the credit union to load their cards with up to $500 worth of value that they can then spend on their cafeteria purchases. When a purchase is made, special transaction equipment reads the value on the purchaser's card, debits the amount of purchase and automatically transfers the value of the purchase amount onto the card of the vendor.

"It's a chip-to-chip transfer." says Greg Miller, CUETS Merchant Products Development Manager. "As soon as the amount is taken off my card, it goes into the vendor's card. There is no need to authorize the transaction as would be the case with a typical credit or debit transaction."

Bev Maxim, Credit Union Central Product Manager for Electronic Account Access, expects an enthusiastic response from all trial participants. "Mondex is promoting itself as faster than cash," says Maxim, "and compared to cash, the Mondex card is fast and convenient to use for both the purchaser and the vendor. You don't need to wait for or make change, and the vendor doesn't have to count cash at the end of the day; all the transactions are handled electronically."

The Regina Mondex pilot, modelled after the current project in Guelph, Ontario, uses much of the support structure that CUETS put in place for the Guelph trials, including a Help Desk, training and marketing materials.

For more information, contact Bev Maxim at 1-306-566-1547 or Greg Miller at 1-306-566-7421.