BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 29
By Zeyni Jafarov - Trend:
The banking market of Azerbaijan reacts very positively to the development of new technologies and Visa's partner banks in Azerbaijan support this process, Visa Regional Manager in the Caucasus region, Kristina Dorosh, told Trend.
“The development of contactless payments is one of the key areas for us. The trend of switching to contactless payments was formed before the spread of COVID-19, and quarantine only clearly demonstrated their advantages: consumers, in an effort to minimize the risks of any interaction, prefer contactless payment methods. Currently, 55 percent of payments with VISA cards or every second operation in Azerbaijan are already carried out contactless,” said Dorosh.
“Visa has initiated important changes since April 2019. According to these changes, all new cards of the company must have the function of contactless payment, and all new POS-terminals must accept contactless cards for payment. With the start of the pandemic, Visa also proposed increasing the limit for contactless payments without entering a PIN code to 80 manat ($47),” the regional manager noted.
“In 2019, Visa introduced the Visa Token Service technology for the first time in the country, thereby opening up the opportunity for banks to implement mobile contactless payment programs. Since the introduction of Visa Token Service, there has been a rapid growth in tokenized transactions. So, from the end of 2019 to June 2020, their number increased 13 times. The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), Kapital Bank, Bank Respublika, and VTB Bank have already connected to tokenization technology. Several more banks are in the process of implementation,” Dorosh added.
“Our task is to expand the scope and popularize contactless payments”, added the regional manager of Visa.
(1 USD = 1.7 AZN on Sept. 29)
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @jafarov_zeyni
