Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 20
By Fatih Karimov – Trend
Iran’s Central Bank is negotiating with foreign payments network companies to offer service to Iranians, Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Chief Valiollah Seif said.
Talks are underway with international credit card issuers including Master Card and Visa in this regard, Seif said, IBENA news agency reported.
He further said that the central bank is preparing the infrastructure for use of the international credit cards inside Iran.
Seif added that talks are finalized in some issues with the foreign companies.
However, he underlined that some of the companies that provide credit card services are American and Iran cannot work with them as the US sanctions against the Islamic republic remain in place.
Seif said that Iran can only work with branches of these companies in other parts of the world.
Earlier, Iranian media outlets quoted Mahmoud Vaezi, the country’s ICT minister, as saying that Iran’s Post Company has signed a deal with a foreign firm to offer MasterCard service to Iranians, meanwhile the US-based MasterCard rejected any cooperation with Iran.
MasterCard spokesman Seth Eisen told Trend Aug. 15 that the company has no activity in Iran.
Last March, it was announced that the Central Bank of Iran adopted a policy of holding regular talks with Visa and MasterCard to have their services in the country.
Iranian officials had already said the country is preparing a ground for the people to use credit cards provided by Asian banks until the restrictions for using the international electronic payment operators, like Visa and MasterCard, are removed.
Earlier, in February, iyzico – a Turkish credit card company – signed a deal with Iran enabling its customers to process transactions from some 230 million payment cards, which until recently were not connected to any financial system outside Iran.
The Turkish company signed the deal to enter Iran after restrictions excluding the country from the SWIFT banking system were removed following implementation of the nuclear deal.