Source: AccessBank.
Baku, November 14 – AccessBank is issuing VISA plastic cards to students of the Institute of Tourism. In future the students scholarships will be automatically transferred to their card accounts. This will greatly simplify the process of both obtaining scholarships for students as well as the process of issuing the scholarships for the Institute employees. At the moment, more than 140 cards have been issued to students, and this number is continuing to increase. Additionally, all teaching staff at the Institute, consisting of 62 employees, were given cards onto which they will receive their salaries disbursals.
The Institute of Tourism of Azerbaijan was established by a Decree of the President of Azerbaijan on August 25, 2005. The Institute functions within the Azerbaijan Ministry of Culture & Tourism.
Jafar Jafarov, the Rector of the Institute of Tourism said, “The fact that our institute has begun issuing scholarships via plastic cards with the support of ‘AccessBank’ is a valuable step forward. First, it helps us achieve the decree of Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, which called for a ‘National strategy to increase transparency and prevent corruption,’ and, second, it’s a perfect application of modern technology to advance the development of education.”
The General Manager of AccessBank, Andrew Pospielovsky, said, “While I may not be so young any more, I can still remember my student days and how important every penny and easy access to my money was. I am delighted that by issuing these VISA cards AccessBank is helping students manage their money while also introducing them to the use of debit cards, which are becoming more and more widespread across Azerbaijan.”
In November, 2006 AccessBank was certified and become a member of the VISA payment system, and in January 2007 the Bank issued its first VISA debit cards. Since then various services like SMS Banking (balance notification via SMS to mobile phone), PIN Change (the ability to change the PIN-code at an ATM), Card-to-Card transfers (transferring money from one card to another via ATM) were introduced. In August, 2007 a new type of plastic card – multicurrency cards-were launched. Besides magnetic-stripe cards the bank has issued cards with embedded chips since September 2008. AccessBank has also been working to expand its ATM network with the goal of better serving its plastic card customers.
AccessBank is 100 percent foreign owned by six shareholders: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank,a href= http://www.kfw.de/EN_Home/index.jsp >KfW – the Development Bank of the German Government (20 percent share each), AccessHolding – a strategic investor in microfinance (16.5 percent), and LFS Financial Systems GmbH – a German consulting company (3.5 percent).
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