E-commerce has become a “lifeline” during the pandemic for many entrepreneurs in Azerbaijan.
The General Director of PaySis, the legal owner of the, Samir Nasibov, told Trend.
During the pandemic, the frequency of requests to connect to the EPUL platform to sell services to entrepreneurs increased by 300 percent.
According to him, more than 200 services were connected to EPUL during the quarantine period. Over the past two months, the company, having connected more than 40 new services, expanded the range of its services. People began to think about additional sales channels, which obviously had a positive effect in the field of cashless payments.
“Of course, it is worth noting a positive trend, when the population began to understand more and more how convenient and fast non-cash payments are. It is upsetting that 18 banks have closed in the country over the past five years. Whatever the reason, this has weakened public confidence in the financial sector, which directly affects growth the share of non-cash payments In contrast, the state is pursuing its own policy towards the shadow economy, as a result of which in the near future we will see its transparency and a positive impact on the growth of non-cash payments.
Thus, the growth of payments for the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of last year amounted to 214 %, “Nasibov said.
He also noted that despite the growth in the development of non-cash payments due to incentive campaigns and cashbacks of various banks,share in this market dropped by about 7 %. The company believes that this is due to the transition to cashless circulation of almost all government agencies.
“The main share of transactions, where the population actively uses our services, falls on the following territories:
- Baku,
- Sumgayit,
- Ganja,
- Lankaran,
- Goychay.
We noticed a tendency that people from the regions of our country began to show more and more interest in non-cash payments, began to ask the actual questions, to put forward interesting proposals, to which we are certainly open, as we try to pay more attention to the opinion of our users, “said Samir Nasibov.
The director of the company noted that the popular services of the company, in addition to banking services, are payments for the services of mobile operators and utility bills. He also noted that in connection with the ongoing reforms by the Central Bank, insurance payments are gaining popularity.
“As for the security of payments, cyber attacks and other vulnerabilities, this year the number of such attacks has increased significantly against the background of the pandemic:
“The reliability of our service is confirmed by certificates of such large organizations as Thawte SSL, Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code. Information protection in electronic payment systems is ensured thanks to the PCI DSS data encryption certificate, which is compliant with the EPUL processing center,” added Nasibov.
He also noted that all their system of cashless payments using a bank card has a 3D Secure security certificate, which ensures the security of card payments on the EPUL platform. The Masterpass service from MasterCard is responsible for the security of the user data stored in the EPUL application. The company integrated this service in 2018 for the first time in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus.
“The proliferation of cyber threats, which have become increasingly sophisticated and unpredictable in recent years, not only complicate the user experience, but also endanger financial information and intellectual property. applications, but also data and users working with them, “Nasibov added.
He further noted that the E-PUL platform is protected by the F5 solution, which is based on a flexible security infrastructure. This solution protects sensitive data and intellectual property, minimizing unproductive application downtime and maximizing user experience. The platform is monitored by Dynatrace, a service provider for monitoring the performance of a company’s application, and it also provides detection and analysis of problems in line-of-business applications. All these innovations give the company no reason to relax, and the organization invests most of its investments in maintaining and improving the security of the service.
“As I said earlier, during the pandemic, most of the population was forced to switch to non-cash payments, as a result of which they appreciated the advantage of the digital channel. During the pandemic, we, together with the payment company VİSA INC, conducted an agitation campaign, within which we transferred AZN 0.25 to the Fund to Support the Fight Against Coronavirus. Thus, by the end of the campaign, we transferred AZN 20,000 to this Fund
Such a campaign has impacted the growth of our economy in relation to previous months by about 17 %. I am sure that our “forced users” will not return to their usual methods, because life is fleeting anyway, why waste your precious time queuing in front of terminals and going to post offices, “added Samir Nasibov.
In conclusion, the director of the PaySis company noted that in the near future the company, together with the VİSA payment system, will launch the first project in Azerbaijan with filling stations. They are confident that this project will be useful for business, that it will facilitate the payment procedure and significantly accelerate the throughput of cars at gas stations.
