Passage of new bill to drive growth of e-money market
By Nigar Orujova
Adoption of the bill "On payment services" will give an impetus to the development of the electronic money market in Azerbaijan, executive director of the processing center "Millikart Group" Jalal Orujov told the local press on August 23.
Under the draft law, Azerbaijani banks and local branches of foreign banks will be able to issue electronic money.
Legal entities licensed to provide postal and financial services, local organizations operating in the field of e-money, as well as local branches of foreign organizations working in the field will be able to enjoy the same right.
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan reserves the right to introduce restrictions on the volumes of e-money issuance.
"Maybe it makes sense to initially facilitate the execution of several supposed statutory requirements, taking into account that the market has no operators that could meet them straight away," Orujov said, adding that the market participants will need some time for this.
"Hopefully, with the approval of the law, the central bank will give the e-money operators a certain time to bring their operations into compliance with the requirements. At present, there are operators, possibly unknown to ordinary cardholders, that have already built their business, which may need to be brought into line with this legal act," Orujov said.
According to him, passage of such a law will eliminate a major gap in the regulation of this sphere.
"Most of the operators were afraid to introduce a variety of new services to the market, because there was actually a very serious gap in the law. Companies do not know whether the new product fits into certain frames stipulated by the law. I think that after this bill is passed, many attractive and modern products will appear in the market," Orujov said.
According to the draft law, if the organization that applied for obtaining a general license is not completely ready to ensure the security of funds of customers in all types of payment services, the central bank will provide this organization with a special license for rendering payment services separately.
Review of applications for obtaining licenses and passage of a relevant decision is to take 90 days.
The mentioned bill also outlines the obligations of payment organizations in ensuring the security of customers' funds.
The draft law also says that the payment organizations of Azerbaijan will be able to provide loans.