Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 16 /Trend, H.Veliyev/
Azerpocht State Postal Operator of Azerbaijan connected 70 post offices to the system of money transfers Western Union, said the head of postal services department of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan Novruz Mammadov.
According to him, 100 more post offices of Azerpocht will be connected to the system by March 20.
Along with connecting to the Western Union system, Azerbaijan is testing the system of money transfers STEFI (Secured Transfer of Electronic Financial Information), Mammadov said.
According to him, Azerbaijan is the first country in the region and the CIS, which has introduced and tests the STEFI system. At present, the system is in test operation in the direction of Ukraine.
Currently, 700 branches and offices of Azerpocht have connected to the corporate system as part of the financial services development project, implemented jointly with the World Bank, he said.
Azerpocht started providing financial services to population in min 2010. Today, the operator is allowed to provide five of the seven existing financial services. These include opening and managing accounts, money transfers, issuance of debit card transactions for buying and selling currencies on the order book and collection of cash and other valuable means. The provision of two more additional services - taking deposits and issue of credit cards will be revised in 2011.
Banking services are provided through the automated corporate information system.
Azerpoct's entry into the Azerbaijani banking market will seriously compete with the banking marketplayers. Azerbaijan banking market has 47 banks, the total number of branches is more than 500, while the number of Azerpoct's post offices exceeds 1,600 units.