Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr I. Khalilova / The processing centre Azericard reported that the Bank Alliance of Azerbaijan promised the international payment systems to complete the transfer to chip technology by 2008. The banks have already completed chip certification in the international payment system Visa International and seven of them have begun the production of chip cards. The International Bank of Azerbaijan, Standard Bank, Bank Respublika, Bank of Azerbaijan, Ata Bank, Atra Bank and Amrax Bank are among them.
In 2007, all Azerbaijani Banks started to process certification of chip cards in the MasterCard international payment system. As transfer to chip technology is a financial obligation of all banks, the banks using two payment systems will convert to chips cards.
Certification of chip cards in Visa is free of charge, while MasterCard requires $30,000-40,000. Visa provides chips at low prices. Three years ago the price for a chip card comprised $9-10. The current price is up to $2. The average cost is €3-5. The price can be decreased by €2-2.5. The price of a magnetic card makes up $0.4-0.5 that is ten times cheaper than a chip card. For this reason banks very seldom produce chip cards.