Mastercard continues evolution of cashless payments internationally and in Azerbaijan
Digital transformation has become the narrative worldwide for all aspects of life. Azerbaijan has become an example of those rapid processes of digitalization. Cashless Azerbaijan – the program which was launched few years ago now has shifted into the bigger action.
Mastercard has been leading the digitalization in payment field and revolutionizing the shopping experience in the country.
Today, in addition to the increase in security and privacy, digital payments are facilitating the financial processes, creating transparency, and leading country economy to the different level.
Contactless payments becoming increasingly popular in Azerbaijan with the increased trust to the technologies.
Erdem Çakar, Country Director for Mastercard stated that the volume of contactless payments has increased. The number of payment cards has doubled since the start of Cashless Azerbaijan program. “We are determined to bring Azerbaijan to a cashless future. Therefore, all our projects and plans serve to create an infrastructure for Digital and Cashless Future. We have been implementing number of projects in the country during the pandemic, which has resulted increased number of cashless payments and raised level of the information and trust among the end users. Domestic POS usage quintupled from 2 billion to 10 billion AZN while the share of e-commerce doubled from 15% to 30%. This double growth means a 10-fold increase in e-commerce volumes in 4 years. Following the pandemic contactless payments have been transformed from a niche payment to a method preferred by the majority of the users”, - Erdem Çakar said.
“Comparing the last 50 years, the coming 5 years promise more changes. So, in 2025, the number of mobile Internet users is expected to increase to 5 billion, each user accounts for 4.4 devices, the use time of a mobile phone will be 3.6 hours per day, the number of smart devices in homes will be 5.4 billion, and in general the number of devices - up to 25 billion. One of the two payments made in neighboring countries, such as Russia, Georgia and Belarus, occurs with mobile contactless devices. In the countries with high mobile contactless penetration overall contactless acceptance have reached 90 percent. I must say that 80% of POS devices accept contactless devices in Azerbaijan, and now smartphones are a POS device. As we started in Shamakh, smartphones will become transport cards”, - Hakan Tatlici said, giving more insight into the development of contactless payments around the world.
Mastercard has announced launch of “Apple Pay campaigns” in Azerbaijan. This solution provides safer, more secure, and special payment options for the customers, i.e., helps them avoiding certain operations, such as giving the bank cards to others, physical touches on the buttons, or cash exchanges. Bringing the iPhone or Apple Watch closer to the payment terminal is what customers need to make a contactless payment.
Apple Pay is available at IBA, Kapital Bank, Bank Respublika and Unibank. These banks will give Mastercard card holders benefits in exchange for identifying and spending their card on Apple Pay. But on top of that, we as Mastercard give benefits from our different campaigns: Mastercard owners will receive 5 AZN cashback using apple pay in the certain supermarkets, 2 AZN cashback for every 10 AZN spent on gas at Azpetrol. KFC restaurants is giving French fries with purchase by applepay for Mastercard clientsThere will soon be benefits from Cinema Plus as well.
Add Mastercard to Apple Pay application and earn cashbacks, lots of bonuses and presents.
