Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 9
By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:
From Jan.11, 2016, while withdrawing money from plastic cards a conversion fee equal to four percent will be charged, Azerbaijan Banks Association (ABA) told Trend Jan. 9.
The commission will be charged only during conversion operations for withdrawing from plastic cards. This measure is aimed at reducing the cash operations from plastic cards and stimulating non-cash payments.
"Some bank customers use cards not for their intended purpose, and us them only in order to cash out their funds," said the source in the association.
"In recent days, the population began to actively transfer manats to their dollar cards, and then withdraw dollars and sell them, which could lead to the emergence of black market. As a result, other citizens could not cash out their dollar funds from their cards, since the ATMs were empty within 30 minutes," said the association.
This decision does not concern the clearing conversion, ABA said.
"Those who carry out payments (in particular with online purchaes) from their manat cards or vice versa, would be billed through the existing conversion tariffs. So the conversion fee for them will be 0.5 percent as before," ABA said, adding that the new rule doesn't apply to withdrawals of currency, same as the one on the account."
The total number of payment cards in Azerbaijan reached 5.679 million units as of Nov.2015, of which 4.59 million units accounted for debit cards, according to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan.
The official exchange rate is 1,5642 AZN/USD as of Jan. 9.
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