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Non-cash payments via cards up

10 July 2019 12:19 (UTC+04:00)
Non-cash payments via cards up

By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

Non-cash payments, which are considered part and parcel of market payments in developed countries, show positive dynamics in Azerbaijan. This type of payments facilitates the transparency of the economy.

Statistics say that the volume of non-cash payments through Azerbaijan’s national payment system reached 274 billion manats ($161.22 billion) in 2018, which is 32 percent more compared to the figure of 2017.

Recent report of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) informs that the total number of operations with payment cards in May 2019 reached 12.498 million and made up 1.961 billion manats ($1.153 billion). Of these, 1.209 million operations for 109 million manats ($64.11 million) were carried out outside the country.

It is important to note that in September 2018, President Ilham Aliyev approved the state program to expand digital payments in 2018-2020, according to which in 2021 the annual amount of cashless payments in Azerbaijan should reach approximately 17 billion manats ($9.97 billion).

Implementation of the program will allow increasing the share of non-cash payments annually by seven percent. The share of cash payments in transactions carried out in the economy will fall from 74 percent to 40 percent. To speed up the implementation of the state program, three fundamental conditions and specific goals for each of them were defined.

CBA report also notes that as of late May, the number of payment cards increased by 14.7 percent compared to the same month of last year and reached 6.97 million.

Growth is also observed in the figures for payment cards turnover via ATMs and POS-terminals. In May 2019, the turnover amounted to 1.96 billion manats ($1.15 billion), which is a 32.6 percent growth year-on-year.

This figure will apparently further grow as since the beginning of 2019, the number of POS-terminals in Azerbaijan increased by 316 units. Thus, the number of POS-terminals in the country amounted to 66,426, of which 41,035 were installed in Baku and 25,391 - in other cities and regions of the country.

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Mirsaid Ibrahimzade is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @MirsaidIbrahim1

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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