Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 13
By Huseyn Valiyev - Trend: Cards from China's national payment system Union Pay International will be accepted at ATMs and POS-terminals of all Azerbaijani banks, head of Azeri Card Business Development Department Jahangir Mammadov told Trend on Nov. 13.
The plastic cards will be for the first time issued in Azerbaijan along with this payment system, in line with the partnership agreement signed between the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) and UnionPay.
The AzeriCard processing center will issue the cards.
According to Mammadov, the product line of this payment system (credit and debit cards) will be presented in the Azerbaijani market.
"Originally, Union Pay payment system cards were envisaged for use in China, whereas now they are actively promoted in the Asian, European and American markets. The potential of the Union Pay cards is evident, given that the system covers China and the Asian region. Certainly, the Chinese payment system has its own characteristics and approaches. In other terms the principle of its operation is identical to the Visa International and Master Card principle of payment systems," Mammadov said.
The representative of the processing center did not comment on the amount of emissions.
Regarding the of commissions while the receipt at the ATMs and POS-terminals of other banks, Mammadov said that they will be agreed between the banks given that the exclusive right to issue UnionPay cards belongs to the IBA.
The China UnionPay national payment system was established in 2002 as a Chinese banking association. The initiators of its creation were the State Council and the People's Bank of China. The UnionPay ranks first in the world in the number of issued cards and the total emission of UnionPay cards in the world has reached 3.4 billion.
UnionPay cards are accepted in more than one million ATMs in more than 140 countries worldwide.
Among the CIS countries, UnionPay cards are accepted in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Georgia.
In many countries, CUP credit and debit cards work in partnership with international payment systems, such as American Express, Master Card and Visa. Pay Pal also announced that it supports UnionPay.