BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 11. Relations between Visa and local banks in Azerbaijan are getting stronger and expanding, Vice President and Regional Manager of Visa in Central Asia and Azerbaijan Cristina Doros told TurkicWorld in an interview.
"The public and private sectors, fintechs and other partners have their own specifics, but they all play an important role in the development and movement of the market forward. The outstanding banks introduce Visa technologies and use them to provide their customers to ease their transfers and payments," she said.
"Moreover, in partnership with banks, we can implement solutions that make the lives of individuals and legal entities, entrepreneurs easier and safer from the point of view of making payments," she added.
"Visa is aimed at developing convenient and secure payment methods, introducing innovations and effective cooperation with partners of Azerbaijan's financial market. The good news is that even older people, who used to physically visit banks to conduct various operations, today are choosing more convenient online solutions," Doros said.
She noted that the support of small and medium-sized businesses has been a strategic direction for Visa for many years.
"This is primarily due to the acceleration of business development and the positive impact of SMEs on the economies of countries. The more small companies and enterprises use convenient payment technologies, the sooner business turnover grows and develops. The second element, which is no less important for us, is the support of local businesses and entrepreneurs. We are very actively working with our partners, creating solutions for micro, small and medium-sized businesses," Doros said.
"One of these solutions is Visa Tap to Phone technology, which allows to accept payments by bank cards using a mobile device with an NFC module based on Android. The Visa Tap to Phone solution is offered together with a Visa Business Card, which provides an entrepreneur with the opportunity to instantly use cash," she added.
She also said that Visa will continue to implement the 'She's Next' initiative in Azerbaijan in 2023. According to her, the company is currently working on creating new formats within the framework of the initiative that would meet the current demand of local businesswomen.
"We are talking about educational elements: training in online sales, digital business, e-commerce, marketing and other necessary knowledge for successful business. We complement educational programs with other components, such as motivation from successful entrepreneurs and the creation of a business community for support and assistance," she added.
According to Doros, the leading sectors of women's business are beauty and health, retail, agriculture, and food.
"There are also special areas, for example, the production of environmentally friendly toys or the creation of educational content for children with special needs. I note that one of the winners of last year's wave of 'She's Next' was an entrepreneur who makes such toys with her own hands. She intends to spend the cash prize from Visa to bring her product to market," Doros added.
Regarding the cybersecurity sector, Doros noted that Visa provides security from numerous cyberattacks every day and continues to invest in network security.
According to her, cybersecurity issues have always been top priority for Visa.
"We continue to attach great importance to this topic, because new technologies aimed at improving the lives of people who appear on the global market may pose a threat in the hands of cyber criminals. For example, various sectors of the economy are vulnerable to such cyber threats as social engineering," Doros said.
"Another area of cyberbullying that we often encounter is phishing emails in the form of various alerts. Taking into account these trends, we are focusing even more on ensuring cybersecurity. For example, over the past five years, we have invested over nine billion dollars in the development of our systems for protecting and countering cyber fraud," she added.
According to Doros, the technologies developed by Visa using artificial intelligence and machine learning make it possible to create effective fraud monitoring systems and prevent cyberattack attempts.
"Measures aimed at improving our anti-fraud systems lead to the fact that, despite the emergence of new fraud algorithms, Visa is able to protect its users from fraudulent transactions," she said.
Visa vice president said that tokenization will change the concept of trade and trade relations.
According to her, Azerbaijan has seen a rapid growth in the number of tokenized transactions.
"The penetration rate of tokenized payments in Azerbaijan exceeds that of other countries, and that is remarkable. Tokenization is a significant trend today, and this technology will continue to expand. Any asset can be tokenized - from fiat money to government securities, stocks, bonds, real estate documents, or cars. Any asset represented as a token on a digital platform can be easily monitored, checking its status in real-time. At Visa, we believe that when this trend becomes mainstream, it will change the concept of trade and trade relations itself because in the digital world, everything can be traded instantly and conveniently," she noted.
Furthermore, according to Doros, Azerbaijani banks actively utilize the B2B Connect solution.
"This solution is essentially non-card-based. It is built on blockchain technology and enables fast, secure, convenient, and controlled cross-border fund transfers for businesses engaged in foreign economic activity. In Azerbaijan, we observe a very active growth in bank connections to this technology. Azerbaijan has the highest number of banks working with the B2B Connect solution," she said.
