rc.nnov.ru is the website of the Nizhny Novgorod processing company "RegionCard-NN" (РегионКард-НН), which handled international bank card settlements. The Nizhny Novgorod site directory at nn.ru placed it in the "Firms (Enterprises): Finance and Insurance: Banks" section alongside local banks, describing it as a provider of "a full range of services for banks, retail businesses and mobile operators for implementing settlements on Visa International and Mastercard International plastic cards," promising "reliable information about the card servicing network in Nizhny Novgorod"[3]. The surviving home-page texts date to 2006 and 2008[1][2]; in the second of these the site already appears under a different name — "Nizhny Novgorod Regional Branch of 'Rucard'"[2].

What the site offered

In the snapshot from March 3, 2006, the home page opened with the heading "Processing Company 'RegionCard-NN'" and a menu of nine items: "News," "Services for Banks," "Payment Acceptance," "Supermarket Servicing," "Cash Dispensing Points," "Trade and Service Enterprises," "Card Production," "About the Company," and "Login"[1]. The list describes the company's business: card infrastructure for banks and retail, including its own card production[1].

The top of the page was occupied by an announcement for an online bill-payment service. As the home page stated, the system "will allow you to pay for various Providers' services over the internet — rent, telephone, gas, and so on," followed by the promise: "You will no longer need to go to the savings bank, you will no longer stand in line, you simply transfer the required amount from your home or office. And it's free!"[1]. Below were two captions to illustrations contrasting cash and card: "You can, of course, carry your money like this..." and "Or you can do it like this..."[1].

The second half of the home page was taken up by an educational block titled "Why do you need a card?" — in the mid-2000s, cashless payment still required explanation. The site explained that international cards allow payment at retail outlets and cash withdrawal at ATMs and bank branches, that all cards except debit cards can be used for online purchases, and that Eurocard/MasterCard, Cirrus/Maestro, VISA and VISA Electron cards, when traveling abroad, "allow their holders to minimize the amount of cash currency carried with them" and remove the need to declare it at customs; card conversion, the page promised, happens automatically "at exchange rates"[1]. The page closed with the service links "About the Site" and "Site Map" and the signature "© 2006 rc"[1].

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The earliest trace of the site in our materials is the nn.ru directory, captured by the web archive on November 17, 2003. The "Banks" section at that time listed twelve sites, and only three of them had a rating value shown: "Ellips Bank — a bank of new technologies" — 240, "OJSC NKB RADIOTEKHBANK" — 97, and "Processing Company 'RegionCard — NN'" — 77; the remaining nine, including Nizhegorodpromstroybank, NBD-Bank, the Volga-Vyatka Bank of Sberbank, and "Garantiya" bank, showed "none" in that column[3]. The figure 77 was a link to Counter.nn.ru with counter number 10972 — meaning the processing company's site took part in the city-wide traffic rating, on whose data the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is based[3]. The figure was modest: it placed "RegionCard-NN" on par with bank websites, but three times behind the section leader.

In the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote from 2004, which lists more than two hundred entries, neither the address rc.nnov.ru nor the names "RegionCard" and "Rucard" appear[4]. The infrastructure company lived quietly in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: it was known to banks and shops, not to the public that cast votes for favorite sites.

From "RegionCard-NN" to "Rucard"

The snapshot from June 25, 2008 shows the same page with the same layout and the same nine-item menu, but with a different header: "Nizhny Novgorod Regional Branch of 'Rucard'"[2]. Judging by the name, the company had turned from an independent processing firm into a regional division of a larger structure; the site itself gave no explanation of this on the home page[2].

The text was edited selectively. The list of payment systems in the "Why do you need a card?" block was generalized: "Eurocard/MasterCard, Cirrus/Maestro, VISA and VISA Electron cards" became "Cards of international payment systems"[1][2]. The online bill-payment announcement remained in place word for word, but immediately after it the saved text shows a stray fragment of markup, "-->" — a trace of an edit in which part of the page had been hidden inside an HTML comment[2]. The signature at the bottom changed to "© 2008 rc"[2].

How it closed

The last surviving snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated June 25, 2008[2]. Neither the company's address nor its phone number survive in the preserved home-page texts: contact information lived in the "About the Company" section, of which no snapshots are in our sample[1][2]. There is also no "News" section in the sample from which the company's chronicle could be reconstructed: both surviving copies show only the home page. Of Nizhny Novgorod's mid-2000s card processing business, what remains is a single page, captured twice by the archive robot, and one line in the city directory's banking section.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2008 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Banks" section, 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)