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.