YEREVAN, June 12. /ARKA/. Armenia’s Central Bank’s strategy is to help enhance a dramatic rise in non-cash instruments, Central Bank Chairman Artur Javadyan said in an interview with ‘Haykakan Zhamanak’ daily.
He said a draft law, designed to significantly cut the number of cash transactions, which was approved by all stakeholders, will be soon submitted to the National Assembly’s approval.
According to Javadyan, from the point of view of cashless transactions, dual processes are taking place in the country.
“On the one hand, due to competition, prices for non-cash services offered by Internet banking, mobile banking, Idram, ArCa applications are falling. But on the other hand, the new tools may be more expensive due to the influence of the moment,’ he said.
“We have a unit at the Central Bank that is monitoring these services to protect the interests of consumers and one of the most important tasks for us is financial stability,” he explained.
He said the more transparent companies we have, the easier banking mediation will be. ‘I must say that there is no big problem in terms of balance. We must work daily so that our citizens, customers of banks gradually switch to remote online banking,’ he said.
According to the Union of Banks of Armenia, the number of cashless transactions in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the same period last year increased by 73.6%, and their volume by 53.4%. In the reporting period, the number of payment cards amounted to 460,333, which were used to make 18,154,229 transactions, by 33.8% more than in the first quarter of 2019.
Also, in the first quarter of this year, payment cards were used to make 592,174 million drams worth transactions, an increase of 22.9% or 110.4 million drams compared to the same time span of 2019.
The number and volume of non-cash transactions increased significantly. In particular, in the first quarter of this year, compared with the first three months of last year, cash transactions increased by 2.4%, while the number of non-cash transactions by 73.6%.
The volume of cash transactions in the reporting period compared to the 1st quarter of 2019 increased by 13.3%, while the volume of non-cash transactions increased by 36.3%.
It is also significant that in the first quarter of 2020, the share of non-cash retail transactions made by cards recorded the highest historical growth rate, reaching 55.9%, while in the first quarter of 2019 it was only 36.6%. ($1 – 481.03 drams). -0-
