VISA: Non-cash payments save $70 million to Azerbaijan
By Rashid Shirinov
Azerbaijan is one of the seven largest markets for the international payment system Visa in the CIS region and South-Eastern Europe, the regional Manager of Visa International Mandy Lamb said at a presentation of the "Zero liability" policy in Baku on December 6.
“Azerbaijan has great potential for the development of cashless payments. For Visa, the Azerbaijani market is of great interest, Lamb said.
She added that Azerbaijan managed to save about $70 million during 2011-2015 due to the transition to cashless payments.
VISA is a global payment system that provides cardholders, merchants, financial and governmental institutions in more than 200 countries to fast, secure and reliable electronic payment network. The company was founded in 1958 in California, U.S. Currently, 35 of 37 Azerbaijani banks are memebers of VISA.
In October 2016, the turnover on payment cards through ATMs and POS terminals in Azerbaijan amounted to $610 million. This is by four percent more than the data for the same period of 2015, according to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan.
The total number of transactions with payment cards over this period made up almost $4.05 million.
Meanwhile, the number of transactions on debit cards made up 6.26 million in the amount of $535 million.
As for use of credit cards in October, bank customers carried out 847,000 transactions for a total amount of $75.2 million.
Most of the cards (4.64 million) are debit cards, in particular, 2.51 million are social, 1.51 million are salary cards, and 620,000 are other types. There were 688,000 credit card holders in country as of October, 2016.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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