The start of the maintenance of "Mir" maps in Armenia and "ArCa" maps in Russia

ArmInfo. At the 26th International  Financial Congress (IFC-2017) in St. Petersburg, in which the head of  the Central Bank of Armenia Artur Javadyan participates, it was  announced about the start of the maintenance of ArCa cards in Russia  and the MIR cards in Armenia. The press service of the Central Bank  of Armenia told ArmInfo.

Elvira Nabiullina, Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian  Federation, stated during the speech at the congress: "The first  cross-border operations on the Mir card in the ArCa payment system in  Armenia were held last week and for us this is the first project to  organize an equitable intersystem interaction, and citizens of our  countries, I think I will get new financial opportunities, here I  would like to express my gratitude for the really very rapid and  rapid promotion of this project to the Central Bank of Armenia and  the leadership of the ArCa payment system, "she said. According to  her, the strategic objective of the Central Bank in the coming years  is to provide direct international reception of the "mir" card in the  first place, to the EEU space.

About 273 thousand tourists from Russia visit Armenia every year -  22% of the total number of tourists.  And if before they had to pay  for services and purchase of goods on the cards of international  systems, now it is enough to have a <MIR> card or an <ArCa> card.  Another advantage of this initiative is that, when making a  transaction, the involved parties will know the exchange rate in  advance, which, as planned, will be much more acceptable than used by  international payment systems (Visa / MasterCard).

This project is inherently the first in the EEU space, which  demonstrates the high level of Armenia-Russia cooperation aimed at  high-quality service to citizens of the two countries, increasing the  volume of non- cash payments, and expanding the geography of plastic  operations on the cards of national payment systems. The Eurasian  Economic Union includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan,  Kyrgyzstan.

To note, on July 7, 2017, Central Bank of Armenia included Russian  national payment card system MIR (NSPC) in the register of active  payment and settlement systems, and simultaneously gave permission to  Armenian Card payment and settlement organization to participate in  the MIR system. The project of intersystem interaction assumes mutual  acceptance of cards of national payment systems in the  infrastructures of two countries: ArCa cards in Russia, maps "MIR" in  Armenia. The project also provides for the production of ArCa-MIR  cobeydge (joint) cards. The technical possibility of issuing such  cards has 16 banks operating on the ArCa infrastructure.  To recall,  the need to create a national payment system by cards MIR arose in  the summer of 2014, when Visa and MasterCard, due to US sanctions  against Russia, stopped servicing the cards of a number of Russian  banks. On June 3, 2016, an agreement of intent was signed between  Armenian Card CJSC (operator of Armenia's payment system ArCa) and  JSC NSPC (operator of the Russian payment system Mir), providing for  mutual servicing of ArCa and Mir payment systems in payment  infrastructures.