Skip to content

BORICA & OpenWay: Enabling Bulgaria's mission critical euro payments transition

From legacy constraints to rapid innovation — discover how Network International transformed into the largest digital payment provider in the Middle East and Africa. 

BORICA, Bulgaria's national payment infrastructure operator

Mission

Bulgaria's Euro Day One transition

Customers

35+ banks, PSPs & fintechs

Payment cards

2.4 million+

Infrastructure

1,901 ATMs, 68,119 POS terminals

Peak transition

930,000+ transactions in first 48 hours

Why it matters

Adopting the euro is not simply a currency conversion exercise. National payment infrastructure must continue processing card payments, ATM withdrawals, merchant acceptance, instant payments, settlement, and fraud management without interruption.

Every payment domain must switch to the new currency simultaneously under live production conditions.

Even a short outage could affect consumers, merchants, banks, liquidity, and confidence in the financial system.

The challenge

From the first minute of euro adoption, the national payments ecosystem had to operate seamlessly with no fallback period and no tolerance for disruption.

BORICA needed to synchronize euro remediation across more than 35 financial institutions while maintaining uninterrupted processing for 1,901 ATMs, 68,119 POS terminals, and more than 2.4 million payment cards.

The solution

Rather than introducing parallel systems or fragmented migration paths, BORICA built on its existing Way4-based national card infrastructure. A single real-time platform became the operational foundation for coordinated euro remediation across issuing, acquiring, ATM and POS management, switching, fraud prevention, and 3D Secure.

Way4 delivered

  • Unified real-time payment platform

  • Card issuing, merchant acquiring, switching, ATM and POS management

  • Always-on processing

  • Transaction traceability and reconciliation integrity

  • Controlled euro migration under live production

  • Evidence-based readiness and controlled cutover

  • Euro-compliant processing

  • Proven scalability supporting 200M+ users, 2M+ merchants, 5,500 TPS and 99.999% availability

Business results

Production readiness

First euro ATM withdrawal after 20 seconds

Operational continuity

Zero unplanned downtime

Live processing

930,000+ transactions within first 48 hours

Transaction value

Nearly €42 million

Customer experience

Uninterrupted ATM, POS, SoftPOS and e-commerce payments

Infrastructure

Unified national payment platform ready for future modernization

First transaction evidence

The first minutes of 2026 served as an immediate, real-world stress test for Bulgaria’s payment ecosystem, demonstrating its readiness under simultaneous customer usage across the country.

00:00:20

First successful euro ATM withdrawal, Sunny Beach Resort

00:03:00

First successful euro transaction via SoftPOS, Sofia

00:04:55

First successful euro donation through a virtual POS terminal

borica-timeline

Strategic impact

Bulgaria's Euro Day One demonstrated that national payment infrastructure can undergo large-scale regulatory transformation without interrupting everyday payment services.

The program demonstrated how a unified payment platform can enable national infrastructure transformation under irreversible live-production conditions.

Way4 enabled BORICA to modernize critical payment infrastructure while preserving payment continuity, transaction integrity, and operational resilience.

BORICA documented the operational model and lessons learned in a published case study, providing a practical reference for other markets preparing large-scale payment infrastructure transformations.

The full case study is available at: BORICA Reveals How Bulgaria Executed Euro Payments Cutover at a National Scale | BORICA AD

Industry recognition

The project has already received international recognition from The Digital Banker, one of the world's leading financial services publications.

Global Transaction Banking Innovation Awards 2026

  • Best Digital Transformation Program by a Vendor

  • Excellence in Digital Innovation – Europe

Miroslav Vichev
Miroslav VichevLinkedIn CEO BORICA AD

"This program required precise coordination across the entire payments ecosystem. Our objective was simple: ensure that every payment channel continued operating seamlessly from the first minute of euro adoption."

Pavel Gubin
Pavel GubinLinkedIn CEO OpenWay

"Technology proves its value when it enables large-scale national transformation while preserving public trust and service continuity. We are honored that BORICA relied on OpenWay and the Way4 platform for this mission-critical program."