Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31
By Sara Israfilbayova - Trend:
Azerbaijan is a priority market for increasing the presence of VISA, introducing innovations and developing the e-payments market, Cristina Doros, Senior Director and Head of Products for CIS & South-Eastern Europe at VISA, told Trend.
"Azerbaijan demonstrates very good rates on the development of non-cash payments," she said. "The market is growing dynamically. According to the information of VISA for 2018, the market grew by 42 percent in terms of non-cash payments and by 33 percent in terms of the number of non-cash transactions."
Further, she noted that the strategic objectives of VISA in Azerbaijan remain unchanged and meet the key priorities of Visa.
"The main areas include partnership relations, the introduction of digital payments, expansion of access, and security of payment systems," she said. "The priority development direction for us is the introduction of tokenization technology Visa Token Service (VTS), as well as the development of e-commerce and the expansion of supply of a line of premium products and loyalty programs."
In September 2018, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev approved a state program to expand digital payments in 2018-2020, according to which in 2021 the annual volume of non-cash payments in Azerbaijan will reach approximately 17 billion manats.
In order to speed up the implementation of the state program, three fundamental conditions and specific goals for each of them were defined. Creating more favorable environment involves not only prohibiting regulation norms, but also the application of special incentive mechanisms.