The total number of bank cards in Turkmenistan in January 2021 amounted to 4,459,800, and the number of payment terminals reached 39.2 thousand. This figures are respectively, 51.1 times and 78.4 times more compared to 2013, the Deputy Head of the Banking Automation Department of the Central Bank of Turkmenistan Annamuhammet Atamuradov said in his article published on Friday in Türkmenistan newspaper.
As of February 1 this year, the number of customers connected to the Internet Banking service of Turkmen banks amounted to 634 thousand, and the number of customers connected to the Mobile Banking service amounted to 28.4 thousand. Compared to February 2018, the growth was 1.9 times and 28.4 times, respectively.
The country's banking system provides citizens with such types of cards as Altyn Asyr, Millikart, Maşgala, Goýum Bank Karty, Overdraft Karty, as well as VISA and MasterCard international bank cards.
Last year, the volume of non-cash transactions made through ATMs, payment terminals, Internet Banking, Mobile Banking and e-commerce systems reached 8.8 billion manats, which is 2.65 times higher than in 2019.
The share of non-cash payments in the total amount of transactions made using bank cards in 2019 amounted to 16%, and in 2020 this figure reached 34.4%, increasing by 2.16 times.
Atamuradov said the advantages provided to the citizens of the country are constantly increasing with the implementation of the tasks set in the Concept for the Development of the Digital Economy of Turkmenistan for 2019-2025, the use of non-cash payments and introduction of modern banking services.
As the type and scope of digital payments increases, so does the potential to increase labor productivity, save time and resources, Atamuradov noted in the article.
Despite the introduction of the Halkbank terminal mobile system only in August last year, as of February 1, 2021, the amount of non-cash payments made through this system has already exceeded 1 million 300 thousand manats.
In order to further expand the volume of non-cash payments in Turkmenistan, from January 1 of last year, the banks of the country launched the Cashback service, where a 0.5-3% of the funds spent via debit or credit card is returned back to the card holder.
