Business news

MINSK, 29 November (BelTA) – The Belarusian payment system Belkart and AO NSPK (the company in charge of operating the Russian national payment system Mir) have signed an agreement of intent to allow paying with Belkart and Mir cards in each other’s systems, the Belkart press service told BelTA.

Representatives of the national payment systems of Belarus, Russia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan met in Yerevan, Armenia last week. Participants of the second working meeting of the heads of the national payment systems and the central banks of the CIS states on creating a common payment space remarked that the project to connect the payment systems of Armenia and Russia had been implemented successfully and it is now necessary to continue working to form the common payment space of the Eurasian Economic Union.

As a result of the meeting an agreement of intent was signed on enabling interaction between the Belkart and Mir payment systems.

The Belkart payment system was created in 1994. It is part of Belarus’ integrated national payment system. The main goal of the Belkart system is to ensure Belarus’ financial independence from external impacts in addition to increasing the share of cashless transfers inside the country. As of 1 July 2017 there were 5.56 million Belkart cards in use. The share of cashless transfers made using these cards stood at 79.34%.

AO NSPK (the company in charge of operating the Russian national payment system Mir) was established in summer 2014.