16 April 2019, Baku: Alim Guliyev, the First Deputy Governor of the Central Bank received the delegation headed by Vera Platonova, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager for Visa CISSEE on 17 countries.
The topic of the meeting was the development of cashless settlements and introduction of state-of-art payment solutions and in this context possible cooperation on implementation of the ‘State Program on expansion of digital payments in the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2018-2020’ approved by Decree # 508 of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan on 26 September 2018.
The meeting participants were informed on the Central Bank’s efforts to expand cashless payments, projects and success stories.
Vira Platonova mentioned that, as a rapidly growing country Azerbaijan is in the limelight of the management of the organization, which is keen to make its activities in the country more active, bring new innovative payment solutions and support projects on development of digital payments implemented under the leadership of the Central Bank. Drawing the participants’ attention to findings of the ‘2018 Government E-Payments Adoption Ranking’ (GEAR) on achievements of a number of countries on public payments in 2018 sponsored by ‘the Economist Intelligence Unit’, a research branch of “The Economist”, she said that Azerbaijan is ranking 46th among 73 countries, outstripping Thailand, China and Indonesia.
The participants discussed possible activity directions for the upcoming period on realization of strategic targets specified in the State Program and came to an agreement to cooperate on launch of cashless payment options in transport, educational institutions, expansion of innovative payment solutions and raise financial literacy of the population. They also discussed possibilities for Visa promo campaigns in regions in the current year.
In conclusion a decision was taken to develop and sign a framework document covering interests of both parties and combining the works to be done.