Azernews.Az

The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), the country’s leading bank, remains committed to expanding the scope of its electronic banking services. According to the IBA spokesman, Rauf Aghayev, one of the most popular e-banking services is CardTransfer, which allows holders of IBA-issued Visa International plastic cards to carry out card-to-card express money transfers. Lately, Nikoil Bank became one of the many banks whose cardholders can benefit from such transfers. Thus, the CardTransfer system now covers nine banks, including IBA-Moscow, AtaBank, Bank Respublika, Bank of Azerbaijan, Rabitabank, AGBank, and Bank Standard.
The CardTransfer service is enjoying ever-growing demand in the market. Whereas 3.7 million CardTransfer transactions worth 2.1 million manats ($2.625 million) were carried out in the first quarter of 2009, the figures amounted to 5.1 million and 2.4 million manats respectively in Q4. In total, 17.3 million transfers totaling 8.9m manats were carried out in 2009. For comparison’s sake, the figures were 8.5m and 4.1m manats in 2008, the IBA spokesman said.
According to him, IBA’s e-banking services include an unmatched service allowing customers to pay for airline tickets using all types of remote communication – ATMs, information kiosks, cellular phones, and the Internet banking system. IBA and SilkWay Travel clients can call the travel agency, then make a payment remotely and purchase a ticket without having to leave their home or office.
"This revolutionary service for our market will help those who plan a trip and want to save their time," Aghayev said.
He also reminded that e-banking services include payments of fees to cellular operators Azercell, Bakcell and NarMobile as well as BakiElektrikShebeke power supply company, Internet service providers Elcell and Azeronline, AzTelekom company and SilkWay Travel.
According to Aghayev, IBA has maintained a positive growth trend in electronic payments and money transfers over the past three to four years. Thus, whereas 243,800 e-banking transactions worth 4.88m manats ($6.1m) were carried out in 2007, their number went up to 366,300 in 2008 (a 33.4% increase), for a total of 7.97m manats, or $9.96m (a 38.8% increase). The positive growth dynamics was retained in 2009, with 498,700 transactions carried out in the amount of 13.6m manats ($17m).
As of April 1, IBA’s assets made up almost 5.257 billion manats ($6.571 billion), or 59% over the same date of 2009. The bank’s credit portfolio exceeded $4.925bn. Its deposit portfolio made up over $2.48bn (23.5% growth), including more than $501m held by private individuals.
IBA’s income totaled $108.4m, while expenses made up $84.2m. The bank’s net profit constituted $18.146m in January-March 2010.
As of the end of Q1, IBA’s capital stock stood at $300m, while its gross capital exceeded $590.6m.*