Mastercard celebrates launch of Googlepay in Azerbaijan
Mastercard has been leading the processes of payments digitalization in Azerbaijan, making digital transformation part of the day-to-day life. Cashless Azerbaijan – the program which was launched few years ago now has now totally transformed the financial landscape, making payment processes transparent, easy, and reinforcing country economy. Contactless payments became popular in Azerbaijan with the increased trust to the technologies.
While smartphones became more than communications tool and are being used by people to get from one place to another, attend different events, dine out of order food, they are also now holding loyalty and banking cards.
Starting today, holders of Mastercard in Azerbaijan will be able to add their cards to Google Wallet and pay with their Android phones and Wearable smart devices where contactless payments are accepted.
Avsar Gurdal, Mastercard General Manager for Turkey and Azerbaijan stated that 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 has increased from 2.6 billion to 11 billion AZN while the share of e-commerce significantly increased from 9% to 30%. This growth rate means more than a 10-fold increase in e-commerce volumes in 4 years.
Comparing the last 50 years, the coming 5 years promise more changes. So, in 2025, almost half of the country population will be using mobile internet, 85% of all internet connections will be made through smartphones, and nearly a million of additional mobile users are expected until 2025. In the countries with high mobile contactless penetration overall contactless acceptance have reached 90 percent. I must say that 82% of POS devices accept contactless payments in Azerbaijan, and now smartphones are a POS device. As we started in Shamakhi, contactless cards and smartphones will also become payment means in public transportation.”
“The Google Wallet provides a fast, easy and safe way to pay with any Android phone or Wear OS device,” said Jenny Cheng, Vice President and General Manager, Google Wallet. “Tap and ride the train, tap to pay in stores, have easy access to your boarding pass, store your loyalty cards and more. Keep everything protected in one place, no matter where you go”.
Bringing GooglePay to Azerbaijan, Mastercard 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.
GooglePay is available at ABB, Kapital Bank, Bank Respublika, Unibank, Rabitabank and Pashabank. These banks will give Mastercard card holders benefits in exchange for registering and spending with their cards on GooglePay. But on top of that, we as Mastercard give benefits from our different campaigns in various merchants and brands across the country (full list of merchants and brands: https://mstr.cd/gpay)
