Question for Central Bank: what is the cause of crisis in Armenian  payment market?

ArmInfo.  It is difficult to classify what is happening in the non-cash payments market of Armenia. Apparently, the system has encountered what is commonly called a complete lack of professionalism and an unprecedented indifferent attitude to what is  happening on the part of the Central Bank, the management of the  Armenian Card National Payment System itself and other government  agencies for the country's financial market. In the last few months,  the system has been constantly shaking, payments are not going  through, serious failures are occurring, and the public is becoming a  victim of all this confusion.

In all likelihood, the Central Bank  cannot or does not want to answer a primitive question:  why does a  horse pull a cart, and not a cart pull a horse? They cannot, because  they do not understand or, most likely, turn a blind eye to the fact  that the use of any 'mandatory' system must have a resource base in  the form of a ready and debugged infrastructure. According to the  Chairman of the NGO "Informed and Protected Consumer" Babken Pipoyan,  the constant failures in the work of the National Payment System of  Armenia (ArCa) are related to its enormous workload, which has  increased several times due to regulatory measures taken to reduce  cash circulation and, in particular, due to the transition of all  public transport in the country to cashless payments.

According to the statistics of the State Revenue Committee of the  country, in the part of this department, last year the volume of  cashless payments increased by almost 80%. In the first half of last  year, the department recorded 430 thousand transactions per day. In  the line of payment for public transport services, over 100 thousand  transactions / transfers for the right of travel are recorded daily.  According to the specialist, the Central Bank and ArCa were well  aware of the upcoming problem with an unprecedented increase in  server loads, but did nothing in time, thereby putting the "cart  before the horse". 'Before demanding that the public fulfill the  obligation to regulate cashless payments for travel on public  transport, the state should have taken care to bring the service  infrastructure in line with the new challenges, increase the capacity  of the cashless payment system, and at least develop transport  packages so competently and effectively as to reduce the load on the  servers, which was not done.

According to Babken Pipoyan, it is impossible to expect a long-term  strategy from government agencies, verified on the basis of market  development forecasts, not only in the absence of professional  competence among decision-makers, but also due to the interference of  the executive branch in the affairs of the 'independent' Central Bank  in order to implement state plans, or the interference of the Central  Bank itself in the work of the National Payment System, which seems  to be not directly subordinate to it, by appointing completely  controlled people to its management, although almost all commercial  banks of Armenia are shareholders of ArCa.

According to the expert, the same confusion reigns in other segments,  for example, in the payment terminal market. The Central Bank  requires them to identify the identity of people making payments  exceeding 400 thousand drams per day, which is required by the  legislation related to combating money laundering. But for this, the  state, represented by the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia,  had to create its own biometric database, which was not done and is  now dumping this burden on the shoulders of private companies. The  creation of private databases of citizens of the country, according  to the expert, is unacceptable from the point of view of ensuring the  level of security and protection of individual information. However,  the Central Bank insists on its own and, moreover, threatens to  revoke the licenses of payment companies that disobey. As the expert  noted, government agencies must stop this vicious practice of  shifting their shortcomings and problems onto the shoulders of the  public, and seriously engage in the development of the market  infrastructure.