The share of payment assistants is 0.002% of the total payment transactions. In these few years, payment providers have faced many ups and downs. The CEO of Vandar said that in these two years, the payment situation of the assistants has dropped a lot compared to the early years and it seems the central bank is in the opposite side of innovation.
According to the CEO of Vandar, there is a difference of opinion between the central bank and industry activists over the word innovation. The point that activists in the field say is innovation, the central bank considers it a violation.
According to Iran digital economy annotation, Mehdi Ebadi, the CEO of Vandar, said about the conditions that the payers have experienced in the last five years after receiving the license:
“The payer’s license was formed when the payer was at its peak. Previously, unlicensed people made up a large part of the market, so when the license was issued, it was the peak of the era. Until 2022, it was the peak of payment activities, but after 2022, due to the restrictions imposed by the central bank, payment activities declined and currently, payment has the lowest market share.”
Ebadi explained about the reason for the Central Bank’s restrictions: There is a general disagreement between the Central Bank and industry activists, and this disagreement is about the meaning of the word innovation. The view of market participants on the meaning of the word innovation is similar to that of developed countries.
But the central bank’s view is completely unique to Iran. The point that the field activists say is innovation, the central bank says that it is a violation. It seems that the central bank wants to create a business model and everyone works according to it, when innovation does not demand it.
According to Ebadi, innovation happens when there is a limitation and slowness; For example, in the transfer of international funds through the central bank, a lot of money is exchanged, but from this side, Wise Transfer increased the speed and reduced the price with the mechanism it arranged.
This is where the innovation happened. In different countries, when the speed of settlement with the acceptors was slow, innovation, PayPal and Stripe came to increase the speed of settlement. In Iran, people were looking for activities in this field with the aim of eliminating restrictions; Like instant settlement in Iran, which is done now, but the Central Bank considers these to be violations. When the speed of money settlement increases, money consolidation happens. In fact, the central bank considered pooling of funds a violation.
The CEO of Vandar said about money laundering: Money laundering has several issues; One is that the links of the transmission chain are not lost, which are not lost now. Because all the details are clear. The information is available in the payment organizations, but the central bank wants all the information to be registered in the central bank, so we have to go to the old mechanisms and prevent innovation.
The role of the central bank is to monitor, not to implement
Referring to the activities of aid payments and the central bank, he said: “In the fintech forum, we suggested to the central bank that we write a system ourselves and put it at the disposal of the central bank.” We even include mechanisms where the central bank can suspend or fine the offending service or even block a specific transaction. We submitted all these cases in writing to the central bank, but the central bank did not accept. The Central Bank excuses the issue of supervision and pursues other goals. Regulators in the world monitor and control, but the central bank creates restrictions instead of monitoring by entering into implementation.
Ebadi explained about money laundering: There is a section to combat money laundering in most of the payment providers. For example, we saw earlier that a receiver transacted more than the amounts he normally did. In this situation, we stopped the transaction. These processes exist in most of the country’s major payment providers.
In response to the attachment about the percentage of suspicious transactions, Vandar CEO said: The number of suspicious transactions is very low. The total volume of payment assistance is now 0.002 payment networks. Most payment assistance transactions are clean transactions and a very small percentage may be used for money laundering or anything else. Usually, money laundering does not happen with online transactions, but mostly at branches. Someone who launders a lot of money has relationships at the level of bank branches.
Emphasizing the point that Vandar 100% of its acceptors have this item, Ebadi continued: All payment partners do not have this item, but Vandar 100% of its acceptors have this item, except for cryptocurrencies. Because a special queue code is defined for them.
He said about the advertisements of payment assistances based on the provision of this material: There is a tax risk in this situation. Those who do this type of advertising bear the tax risk themselves; That is, they enter the portal with the tax tracking code and so on and share it with a number of receivers.
We don’t do that, but this is not an area of infringement, it is a form of innovation. The Central Bank and the Electronic Commerce Development Organization should provide a solution for businesses that have the challenge of receiving this information. For example, businesses that are on social media can’t get a direct payment gateway, so they need this.
Cryptocurrency transactions in Vandar are 50%
Ebadi explained about the impact of cryptocurrency activity on payment providers: payment providers are different from each other; For example, now the number of cryptocurrency transactions in Vandar is 50%. It cannot be said that if there were no Cryptocurrencies, there would be no Payment system either, because they were effective together. If there were no payment partners, the cryptocurrency would not be this big.
About the instant settlement service, he said that this service is a mechanism that is currently created by payment providers, but the Central Bank wants to stop it in new approvals. If these approvals are implemented, limitation will occur and settlements will be made more slowly.
In the end, Ebadi said about the future of payment methods: this market has room for development. If the central bank’s view was development-oriented, we probably would have faced a share of about 25% like other countries. The restrictions of the central bank have not allowed the development of this area. The victims of this limited space are not only payment assistants, but entire online businesses.
Fintech is the driving force of other industries, that is, if, for example, the share of Digikala is 2% of online business, one of the most important reasons is the restrictions of the central bank. If it were not for these restrictions, its minimum share would be 5%.
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