ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia July 13, 2017 Thursday The start of the maintenance of "Mir" maps in Armenia and "ArCa" maps in Russia Yerevan July 13 Karina Melikyan. 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.