Acba-Credit Agricole Bank and Visa announced the day before the launch of Visa payWave issuance and acquiring program in Armenia.

The bank will be offering a range of card products enabled with Visa payWave innovative contactless technology - Visa Student, Visa Classic and Visa Gold cards.

The bank noted that Visa payWave contactless technology enables customers to pay by just tapping their card against a payment terminal without handing the card to the cashier. Besides, no PIN or signature will be required for payments under AMD 10,000.

Acba-Credit Agricole Bank installed first contactless POS terminals at Yerevan Mall, where most of the merchants already accept Visa payWave cards. The Bank aims to install about 150 contactless terminals by the end of the year.

Merchants that accept contactless payments have the following symbol on their POS terminals. All Visa payWave cards also have the same symbol.

Visa payWave offers numerous advantages to customers and merchants including speed, convenience and security. Merchants can also benefit from serving customers faster, thus limiting queues and increasing the number of customers.   

The Bank will offer 50% cashback on the first transaction below AMD 20,000 performed on any Visa payWave card in the period from June 15 to August 31, both domestically or internationally. All existing Visa Student, Visa Classic and Visa Gold cardholders may upgrade to Visa payWave free of charge by June 30, 2015.

“Having issued the first Visa chip card in Armenia back in 2009, today we are proud to introduce Visa payWave cards, which mark the next stage in the development of payment technologies,” said CEO of Acba-Credit Agricole Bank Bank Hakob Andreasyan.

According to him, with the launch of Visa payWave they aim to reduce the time it takes consumers to pay with their cards.

“This year we are going to install a great number of contactless POS terminals in Yerevan and will continuously develop this market segment. Today customers are more prepared to use cards for medium and large payments, while for small ticket cash still prevails. Visa payWave is about changing this pattern and making cards preferred payment method,” added Hakob Andreasyan.

Visa’s Regional Manager for the Caucasus Irina Kamkhadze noted that Visa is continually seeking new technological advances to enhance consumers’ payment experience and boost cashless payments.

“We hope that Visa payWave will drive card payments into traditionally cash-based retail environments where speed and convenience are important, such as minimarkets, hypermarkets, petrol stations, fast service restaurants, shopping malls, and taxi,” said Irina Kamkhadze.

To launch its first Visa issuing and acquiring program Acba-Credit Agricole Bank has partnered with two well-known French companies - Oberthur Technologies and Ingenico.