BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14
By Sadraddin Aghjayev - Trend:
MasterCard has launched several projects to promote cashless payments in Azerbaijan within the “State Program on Expansion of Digital Payments in the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2018-2020”, head of MasterCard company’s office in Azerbaijan Erdem Cakar told Trend.
“Let me start couple of years back, in 2018, when, along with the “State Program on Expansion of Digital Payments in the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2018-2020”, we have launched and successfully engaged several projects to promote cashless payments in the country,” Cakar added. “Together with the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, we conducted many campaigns. Last one was in 2020 where we launched the largest scale campaign with Bravo supermarket for the customers who pay with Mastercard providing great gifts via a lottery. These are targeting promotion of the cashless payments in Azerbaijan.”
“We also launched smart student cards with the Ministry of Education in universities,” Cakar added. “With these smart cards, students can receive scholarships on their cards and make any payments with them in and out of campus. Parents living in the regions can easily transfer money to their children. Students can use smart cards to access books at library, take photocopies, and meals.”
“We introduced Masterpass, which allows consumers store their card under Mastercard security protection,” Cakar said. “When shopping online, consumers do no need to enter the card number, expiration date and CVC code of card. It is enough to save the card once. You no longer need to enter your card data and the store / website does not need to store it.”
“Finally, we introduced the Priceless Specials, a large discount network which allows you to get discounts in many hotels, medical institutions, coffee shops and boutiques when paying with a Masterpass or Maestro card,” head of MasterCard company’s office in Azerbaijan said.
“As Mastercard prioritizes knowledge and education, hence we have been holding training for the bankers in cybersecurity and product development,” Cakar said. “With the same goal, we have been doing media workshops on digital payments for journalists and editors.”
“Moreover, we all know by now that cashless payment is clean not only in terms of transparency and financial security, but also in the full sense of hygiene, as shown by the outbreak of coronavirus in China, where they really began to avoid banknotes and give preference to cashless settlements,” head of MasterCard company’s office in Azerbaijan said. “Now the epidemic has gone worldwide and transformed into a pandemic, and all countries of the world have begun to avoid paper money. The demand for a cashless form of payments has increased many times.”
“We as Mastercard are proud to work with all the regions of Azerbaijan to promote the cashless society and digitalization in finance,” Cakar said.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: agdzhaev