SmartVista Contracts control all aspects of service each customer is entitled to as a cardholder, merchant, or payroll or loyalty program owner. In general, these are not individual contracts with every customer: each SmartVista Contract is a set of standard terms, conditions and settings that define the service provided by the bank to the customer as a product. So the same Visa Electron card offered to an individual customer and to a corporate customer employee under a payroll scheme will be two different products issued under different Contract ID's. On the other hand, all Visa Electron cards issued to individuals under a certain set of conditions will probably be the same product, and referenced to the same Contract ID in these customers' details.

Of course, it will always be possible to offer personalised service to high value customers by defining individual contracts for them, but it is important that no customer can be added without a reference to a SmartVista Contract. All parameters included in the contract definition, such as customer limits, fees, rates or other contract details, can be changed once to be applied automatically to all customers linked to this contract template.

To ensure that these changes can be done even easier and in a more consistent way, SmartVista Contracts do not usually hold these parameters directly. Instead, the Contract holds references to SmartVista Schemes that tell the system where to find them and SmartVista Templates used to generate customer related records based on a Customer Application that refers to this Contract. A more detailed description of Schemes and Templates is given in a dedicated section below.