Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) has developed a new strategy on the development of non-cash payments until 2020.

The news was announced by Head of Department of Payment Systems and Accounts of CBA Kamala Gurbanova on the Doors Open Day on July 17.

"Earlier, we prepared a draft state program on the development of cashless payments in Azerbaijan for 2012-2016. Unfortunately, the approval process was hampered and we decided to develop a new document that will cover the same tasks from 2015 to 2020," she said.

Gurbanova added the draft document will be submitted to the government by the end of 2014.

CBA intends to continue pursuing the policy to encourage cashless payments through conducting a variety of measures to improve the financial literacy of the population.

The state program envisages expansion of infrastructure opportunities for electronic payments, strengthening of legislative basis for electronic payments, more involvement of population and the business entities to use the established infrastructure, as well as enlightenment of population.

CBA also proposed to exempt certain types of online purchases from customs duties.

Azerbaijan has developed a modern bank infrastructure which enables its financial entities to conduct non-cash and online transactions. The expansion of non-cash transactions in 2014 is among the main priorities of CBA. The main goal is to decrease the cash volume of the country.

In 2005, Azerbaijan adopted a state program on the development of payment systems. To this end, certain measures were taken and some relevant legislative basis was amended.

In 2012, the Cabinet of Ministers approved some rules on installation and using of POS-terminals in the country.

It is scheduled to cover the whole territory of Azerbaijan with POS-terminals by 2015.

The card infrastructure in the country has developed recently. As of June 1, the Azerbaijani banks had issued 5.97 million payment cards. In 2013, this figure amounted to 5.5 million units.

The total turnover of payment cards in ATMs and POS terminals amounted to 988 million manats in January-May. The number of operations reached to 6.634 million units in the same period.

Compared to 2012, the number of payment cards increased by 9 percent, ATMs by 8 percent and the volume of non-cash transactions in POS-terminals by 1.8 times in 2013.

The official exchange rate was 0.7843 AZN/USD on July 17.