MasterCard plans to increase Azerbaijan's non-cash turnover in 2021

By Trend

MasterCard plans to bring the non-cash turnover of all payments in Azerbaijan up to 40 percent within 2021, MasterCard representative in Azerbaijan Erdem Cakar told Trend.

"The non-cash payment system has grown by almost 30 percent in Azerbaijan over the past three years," Cakar said. "The non-cash payments increased by 25 percent from 2019 through 2021, but the share of non-cash transactions (payments through POS terminals, replenishment and withdrawal of cash through terminals) increased by only 20 percent."

"Our campaigns in Bravo hypermarkets have contributed to an increase in the local number of contactless payments and they accounted for about 80 percent of all types of payments," MasterCard representative in Azerbaijan added. "We are implementing a pilot project of non-cash payments on public transport in Shamakhi city."

"From now on, passengers do not need to use cash to pay for trips," Cakar said. "As part of this project, we launched a campaign when a passenger pays for travel by using a MasterCard and money is not taken out of the card balance, that is, MasterCard pays for passenger travel as support for non-cash payments."

Cakar stressed that such a project is also planned to be implemented together with the program for expanding non-cash payments of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) in Ganja city.

"We want to transfer all payments of Azerbaijan to non-cash payments and, in general, withdraw cash from circulation," MasterCard representative in Azerbaijan added.

Cakar said that the non-cash turnover of funds in all banks and payment systems of Azerbaijan amounted to 30 billion manat ($17 billion) in 2020.

"We plan to bring the non-cash turnover of payments up to 40 percent during 2021," MasterCard representative in Azerbaijan said. "To achieve this goal, we are implementing various campaigns and projects together with the CBA and encouraging the country's population to completely switch to non-cash payments."