Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

Managers of financial and technological companies of Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, China and a number of European countries gathered in Baku on April 17 to discuss issues related to baking sector at the 1st International Banking Exhibition and Conference entitled “Digital Banking and Security”.

PASHA Bank Chairman Taleh Kazimov addressing the event, said that banks of Azerbaijan must actively participate in the development and amendment of the banking legislation. He noted that this will help achieve the required results faster and timely address the existing challenges in the market.

“Presently, many people think that the development of the legislative base depends on Azerbaijan’s Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FIMSA), but banks must also actively participate in these issues,” Kazimov said.

He added that currently many banks are negotiating with FIMSA to improve legislation within the development of digital banking. “I think these negotiations will lead to positive results in the near future,” he noted.

Kazimov said that presently PASHA Bank is working hard to develop digital banking and considers it necessary to expand cooperation with financial and technological companies.

“Banks must stop competing with financial and technological companies and start cooperating with them. Financial and technological companies work faster, they have a large number of services, but there is a lack of client base and trust,” he mentioned. “If banks and other financial institutions continue to compete with financial and technological companies, we will simply fail. Together we could make great progress.”

Executive Director of Digital Banking in AccessBank Sabina Gurbanova, in turn, said that the bank seeks further development of digital banking. She noted that AccessBank timely invested in the development of IT infrastructure and can keep pace with innovations in the market.

“As one of the leading banks in Azerbaijan in the field of digital banking, today AccessBank offers various innovative solutions to its customers via its mobile and Internet banking platform myAccess,” Gurbanova said. “If we compare the number of non-cash payments processed through myAccess and the bank branches, more than 70 percent of transactions happen online.”

The executive director added that today banks, in order to preserve the customer base, should improve their online channels and self-service capabilities for customers.

Zhang Chengdong, General Manager at Central Asia and Caucasus Regional Office of the Chinese payment system UnionPay, in turn, said that the company intends to expand its presence in the Azerbaijani market. UnionPay intends to achieve this by expanding cooperation with its partners in Azerbaijan.

“Our company entered the Azerbaijani market in 2016 and cooperates with such banks as International Bank of Azerbaijan and AtaBank. With the help of partners we plan to increase our share in the local market by the end of this year,” Chengdong said.

He added that the company plans to issue local UnionPay cards before the end of this year.

Presently, UnionPay is the largest card payment organization in the world based on payment transactions, schemes and number of cards issued, ahead of Visa and MasterCard. In addition to Chinese banks, UnionPay cards are issued by some banks in Thailand, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Several Azerbaijani banks, namely the International Bank of Azerbaijan, AzerTurkBank, MuganBank and AtaBank, already cooperate with this company.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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