PASHA Bank, Visa and McDonald's Azerbaijan launch Visa payWave contactless payments

PASHA Bank, Mc Donald's Azerbaijan and Visa launched Visa payWave acceptance at McDonald's chain restaurants. The first contactless transactions with Visa payWavecard and smartphone with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology were completed today, September 25th. To enable Visa payWave contactless payments PASHA Bank, an acquiring partner of the project, installed modern contactless point-of-sale (POS) terminals at all restaurants of the chain.

McDonald'sAzerbaijan is the first merchant among fast-service merchant category to launch contactless payments in their restaurants in the country. Starting from now consumers will be able to quickly and securely pay with Visa contactless cards along with traditional payment cards at the same POS terminals.

When making a payment using a traditional payment card, customers can insert or swipe the card through the POS terminal on their own. When paying with Visa payWave contactless card, customers can simply bring the card closer to the contactless reader on the POS terminal without passing the card to the cashier.

Visa payWave contactless technology can also be used on mobile phones that support contactless payments via NFC. The mobile phone payments can be made with the same terminals accepting contactless cards in McDonald's restaurants.

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.

Merchants that accept contactless payments have the following special symbol on their POS terminals.

To make contactless payments even faster and more convenient for consumers PASHA Bank also launched Visa Easy Payments Service at McDonalds, which means that for payments under AZN20 no PIN and signature are required.

«Over the past years we have witnessed a very dynamic development of every aspect of the national economy of the county, including banking; and digital payments became one of the key drivers for this development. With Visa payWave launch at McDonald's, which is one of Visa's key global partners, Azerbaijan entered the era of fast, convenient and secure contactless payments. We hope that customers will enjoy the ease and functionality of Visa payWave and a broad adoption of contactless payments in the country will help us to spur economic growth of Azerbaijan further," said Irina Kamkhadze, regional manager for the Caucasus, Visa.

«PASHA Bank became the first bank in Azerbaijan providing both emission and acquiring of cards supporting "contactless technology" of both leading payment systems, thus once again confirmed the status of one of the best technology-friendly banks of the country. Using Visa payWave contactless payment technology, our customers can make non-cash payments by just "one touch", without authentication by using PIN-code or signature. This service becomes more important in the trade-service enterprises with the large flow of customers at relatively small average ticket», added Leyla Mammadova, Director of direct-banking department of PASHA Bank.

McDonald's Azerbaijan LTD has been serving its customers since 1999. "Having been operating in the Azerbaijani market for already 15 years, McDonald's Azerbaijan has always applied new technologies that you witness today. I'm hopeful application of a new -Visa payWave contactless technology in our restaurants will perfect our customers' payment system further", said manager of McDonald's Azerbaijan LTD Anar Bayramov.