BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 2. Visa's relations with Azerbaijani banks are strengthening and expanding, and, of course, banks are our main partners in the development and implementation of innovative solutions, Cristina Doros, Vice President and Regional Manager of Visa in Central Asia and Azerbaijan, said in an exclusive interview to Trend.
"We cooperate with all banks in Azerbaijan and we are very happy that year by year this cooperation only strengthens and expands. Earlier, perhaps, we focused on narrower areas - cards, card products, technologies - but now Visa cooperates with banks much wider, in different areas. This includes marketing, consulting services, and what we call "managed services" - work that we do practically on behalf of the bank. We develop a project together, and then the Visa team implements a certain part of the work for a particular partner. The cooperation will only expand, and we are sincerely happy about it," she said.
Cristina Doros also noted that in 2013-2014 Visa first implemented contactless payments in the country.
"During those years it concerned acquiring, and then it expanded to issuing. Now the terminals can accept contactless payments and in turn, cards can also be used to pay contactless. Later, in 2019, we jointly with the International Bank of Azerbaijan for first time introduced tokenization technology - Visa Token Service. This led to the appearance of something we call a banking or issuer wallet. Thus, for the first time in Azerbaijan, it was possible to link a card to a mobile application on a smartphone and pay for purchases with it. Kapital Bank later joined this service, followed by other banks. Tokenization created the foundation for the emergence of Apple Pay and Google Pay in the country, which works on its basis. These technologies are now widely used in Azerbaijan and are becoming more and more popular because it has become faster, more convenient, and safer to pay for purchases with them. At present it is possible to link Visa card to Apple Pay in 14 banks, and Google Pay - in 15 banks," she said.
According to Cristina Doros, another interesting area of cooperation is so-called "non-card" payments.
"I am truly proud that Azerbaijan Kapital Bank has become the first bank in the vast region of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa, comprising 88 countries, to implement B2B Connect. This is a non-card solution that allows companies serviced by the bank and engaged in active export-import activities to make international cross-border payments conveniently, securely, and in a controlled manner. Those who work in this field know how difficult it can sometimes be to track down which correspondent bank your payment is with. B2B Connect allows the sender to always know where his money is. This solution is now implemented in seven banks in Azerbaijan," she said.
Continuing the theme of cooperation with banks, the Vice President noted several socially significant projects.
"For example, transportation solutions, such as the possibility to pay for transportation fares contactless with a regular bank card, without the need to purchase additional transportation cards and replenish them. We have implemented a contactless fare payment system on the Baku-Sumgayit branch line in partnership with the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), the International Bank of Azerbaijan (ABB), and Azerbaijan Railways. Validators (terminals for accepting card payments) have been installed at 14 stations. Now it is possible to pay fares by contactless card when traveling on the Baku-Sumgayit ring and back. We see how people who may not have previously used cards for payment and preferred cash, after the first attempt to pay for transportation by card understand how easy it is, and discover the world of digital payments," she commented.
Cristina Doros also emphasized that many passengers then start using digital payment means in other areas of life, for example, in supermarkets, gas stations, pharmacies, and so on.
"Thus, transportation is becoming a significant area of digital payments development, and we are sincerely proud of the work done. We introduced a new technology of transportation payments in our region, namely in Baku, on the railroads. We call it MTT - Mobility & Transit Transaction. Now we have introduced this system on the railroads, but our goal is to continue integrating different modes of transportation. The technology allows us to combine [subway, bus, and rail] payments for the whole day into one transaction, taking into account the fares of each mode of transportation and their fare schedules. It works efficiently. Different fares depend on zones and also on your status - whether you are a pensioner, a student, or a schoolchild. The system can account for all these factors. And this has also been introduced in Baku and our region," she concluded.
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