VISA denies suspension of servicing of Turkmen banks
By Kamila Aliyeva
VISA denied reports on suspension of servicing of Turkmen banks by the international payment system.
A representative of VISA on CIS and South-Eastern Europe contacted the Turkmen service of Azatlyk radio and denied this information.
The Corporate Communications Manager of VISA, Anna Serdyuk, said in a telephone interview that all transactions and services to all banks continue in the standard mode.
At the same time, another source close to the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs of Turkmenistan on December 8 stated that last week, operations on VISA payment cards, emitted by Turkmen banks, were limited. However, this measure was taken not by VISA, but by the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs.
“I have no information on this issue [Turkmenistan's debt to VISA]. Cards are issued by specific banks. Accordingly, if the cardholder has any difficulties, there are some limits set by the bank and he must solve this issue with the bank. We work with banks and we did not suspend the provision of services or the processing of transactions on VISA cards of any bank in Turkmenistan,” Serdyuk said.
She also failed to specify how much of the VISA cards issued by Turkmen banks were processed from December 1.
Earlier, it was reported that in connection with Turkmenistan's debt to VISA, operations on Turkmen payment cards were suspended.
The international payment system VISA started the first operations in Turkmenistan in 1994. Another international payment system MasterCard also began to be serviced in 1994, but only for foreigners. For local customers, MasterCard became available only in 2014.
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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva
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