Business news

MINSK, 23 October (BelTA) – A payment service might be integrated into Belarusian ID cards, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus Dmitry Kalechits said at the international forum on information technologies in banking industry BankIT 2018 on 23 October, BelTA has learned.

“The country is implementing a remarkable project to develop its own integrated service and settlement system and an ID card. An idea was put forward to incorporate a payment service into this card. We suggested materializing this idea on the basis of the Belkart payment application. We also suggested introducing a concept of basic calculation,” Dmitry Kalechits said.

The proposal to use ID cards for payments is being studied by stakeholders, including banks because it is necessary to take care of numerous technicalities.

As BelTA reported earlier, ID cards and biometric passports will be available in Belarus starting from 1 January 2020. An ID card will incorporate several functions of a traditional passport and will become the only identity document in Belarus. A biometric passport will be used only for travelling abroad. It will not be valid on the territory of Belarus – this function will be assumed by the ID card.

Speaking about the prospects for the Belkart national payment system, Dmitry Kalechits noted that Belarus embarked on inter-system integration of the Belkart payment system with Russia’s national payment system Mir. At the same time, work is underway to introduce EMV payment standards for Belkart cards using specifications and applications developed by the Mir payment system.