Mobile payment service to be deployed in Azerbaijan via Visa
By Rashid Shirinov
The rapid development or information technologies in recent years has created more opportunities for people in their everyday life. One of them is the mobile payment service that allows paying for goods and services through mobile devices.
Apple Pay and Google Pay are the most popular of such payment services, but not active in Azerbaijan so far. Head of Azexport portal Zaur Gardashev says that both of them will be deployed in the country through the Visa International payment system.
In an interview with Trend on April 16, he noted that this issue is still at the stage of negotiations, and Azerbaijan’s banking structures will join the process.
“It is important that the banks' infrastructure is ready for accepting such payments. However, issues related to legal regulation, as well as the existence of gaps in the sectoral legislation in a certain sense hinders the deployment of these payment services in the country,” Gardashev said.
He added that the complexity lies mainly in conservatism of banks and regulators. “But we hope that we will be able to reach a common agreement so that appropriate rules are developed.”
Head of Azexport noted that despite the fact that many financial market participants say there are no obstacles to the deployment of international payment services to Azerbaijan, these companies are more inclined to act within the local legislation in order to insure themselves.
Gardashev has earlier said that Azerbaijan’s current sectoral legislation is built on the basis of classical card systems, while special digital codes – tokens – are used when making payments through Apple Pay and Google Pay. In this connection, there is a need for the concept of tokens to be identified in Azerbaijani legislation.
Apple Pay is a mobile payment and digital wallet service that lets users make payments using an iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad or Mac. It takes credit cards, debit cards, and other sensitive payment data from the wallet app, which allows the use of the above devices as a form of payment in stores. Currently, the service is available in more than 20 countries.
Google Pay is a similar service, enabling users to make payments with Android phones, tablets or watches. It is in use in almost 20 countries around the world, such as the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Spain, etc.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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