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.
