Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 12
By Sara Israfilbayova - Trend:
Azerbaijan has a great potential to fully transfer to digital payments, said Majeed Hujair, the senior director of Visa School of Public Policy.
“Mobile usage in Azerbaijan is very high. The government and the banking sector need to think cleverly how to expand payments through mobile,” Hujair said.
He stressed that the government’s role in helping to shift to digital payments is great and crucial.
“The government needs to enable the receiving of digital payments in all the departments and public entities and also encourage people to avoid cash payments,” the expert noted.
He stressed that sometimes the governments need to revise their regulations and make the regulations easy for participants.
According to the state program on the expansion of digital payments in 2018-2020, approved by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the annual volume of non-cash payments in Azerbaijan will reach about 17 billion manats by 2021.
Implementation of the program will allow to increase the share of non-cash payments by seven percent annually.
In accordance with the program, the share of cash payments in transactions carried out in the country's economy will fall from 74 percent to 40 percent.
(1.7 AZN = 1 USD on Feb. 12)
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