Contactless card payments limit increases

19-08-2020

18 August 2020, Baku:  One of the main goals set for the Central Bank in the "State Program for the Expansion of Digital Payments in the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2018-2020", approved by the Decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan No. 508 dated September 26, 2018, is to create a digital ecosystem containing innovative payment solutions.

As a result of the work done in recent years to build a digital payment ecosystem in the country, significant progress has been made in the contactless payment infrastructure. Thus, 26% of payment cards in circulation (2.3 million) and 53% of POS terminals (29.5 thousand) support contactless payments. For comparison, it should be noted that for the same period of 2018, these indicators were 7% (409 thousand) and 32% (21 thousand), respectively.

Especially during the pandemic, as in all countries, the need for digitalization, contactless payments, e-commerce, e-banking services has become more relevant in Azerbaijan. The fact that the virus spreads by touching the surface during a pandemic has led the population to prefer contactless payments without touching the POS-terminal. In order to increase the population's ability to make contactless payments during the pandemic, the limits of non-cash transactions with contactless cards without entering a PIN code have been raised in many countries around the world. Using a similar practice, the Central Bank raised the limit of contactless payments by cards without entering a PIN code from the current level of 50 (fifty) manats to 100 (one hundred) manats. As a result, consumers' ability to make daily contactless payments in a more convenient, faster and safer way has been expanded.

In line with the strategy of expanding the contactless card infrastructure  in the country, the Central Bank continues to interact with the banking sector to enable all bank cards and POS terminals to support contactless payments in the near future.