15:41 - 16.04.2025

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April 16, Fineko/abc.az. The retail trade in Azerbaijan in 2024 amounted to 62.2 billion manats. The actual turnover in 2024 increased by 3.9% compared with the previous year.

ABC.AZ reports that MP Vugar Bayramov wrote about this on his social network account. He noted that the non-cash turnover of retail trade reached 24.5 billion manats during the year.

"Considering that commission fees average 1.5%, banks simply earn 368 million manats a year for servicing POS-terminals.

This is a large amount, and it also increases business costs, affects prices, and increases the cost of orders for micro and small entrepreneurs. As a result, high commission fees are also undesirable from the point of view of micro and small business development. At the same time, the high cost reduces interest in using plastic cards in some service and sales facilities.

This means that banks need to optimize the cost of using POS-terminals. In Europe, a maximum of 0.2% is applied to debit card payments and a maximum of 0.3% to credit card payments under Interchange. In the USA, debit card inter-network fees are limited by law: $0.21 + 0.05%. And in a number of states, low fees for payments and even government subsidies are applied," the MP stressed.

By Elmir Murad