DUSHANBE, 03.12.2019 (NIAT Khovar) – A number of domestic and foreign media have been discussing the news that the opening of the National Processing Center (NPC) for the transfer of funds by the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT) which was launched today will affect the interest rate and commission of money transfers of labor migrants from Russia to Tajikistan, as well as transfers from other countries. Some are even stipulating that the transfers will cease completely.

Editor of Khovar’s Russian service Elena Batenkova asked the NBT to clarify the issue.

“Money transfers from abroad, including from Russia, are not suspended. Transfers continue to be carried out through payment systems that are connected to the NPC. To date, the Contact and Unistream systems are connected to it. Individuals can transfer and receive money transfers through these systems. The Western Union payment system is at the final stage of connection, its services will be available in a few days,” noted NBT’s Press Service.

According to the source, all citizens who did not have time to receive money transfers should contact the payment system offices, and senders should re-send money transfers through systems already connected to the NPC. To date, payment systems such as Western Union, Golden Crown and MoneyGram are not connected to the NPC.

Representatives of all payment systems were aware of the introduction of these measures in advance.
Meanwhile, according to the NBT, the NPC’s opening does not affect the interest rate when making money transfers.

“NBT has no relation to the tariff policy of these systems. With the introduction of this innovation, NBT will not receive any interest or fees from money transfers,” noted the source from the NBT.

Moreover, since January 2019, NBT held talks with foreign payment systems to reduce the tariffs implemented by NPC, in connection with which the commission for a significant (about 80%) share of the total remittance flow decreased from 1.5% to 1, 0%, which contributes to a significant reduction of the cost to senders and recipients of money transfers.

NBT attributes the introduction of new measures to the fact that in recent years a number of reasons have been identified that impede the stability and uninterrupted functioning of systems, including the lack of an opportunity for the country’s citizens to receive money transfer from any credit organization in Tajikistan.

This is due to the fact that the money issuing points of credit organizations that have direct contractual relations with individual payment systems may have an uneven geographical distribution throughout Tajikistan. Likewisr credit organizations working with various payment systems are forced to open correspondent accounts for working with each from of payment systems, which entails additional financial costs, time and risks. Credit organizations pay money transfers out of their own expense funds, resulting in a risk of non-repayment of paid remittances by payment systems, which, in turn, could lead to a destabilization of the financial market, considering the amount of money coming into the country through money transfer systems.

The existence of cases of such financial difficulties with at least two payment systems,- Leader and Instant, have been shown in the past. Leader’s bankruptcy, and the resulting monetary liabilities worth 20 million Russian rubles are still owed to the credit organizations of Tajikistan.

Among the shortcomings is the lack of an online cash flow monitoring mechanism.  Such monitoring is a necessity in order to counter the financing of terrorism.

The existing practice of money transfers without opening an account shows the existence of cases of an international scale that have damaged the country’s image, which in turn affects the country’s investment attractiveness and the absence of a single exchange rate for money transfers, which contributes to the artificial manipulation of the money transfer market.

Considering the identified shortcomings in the current system of money transfers in Tajikistan, NBT launched the unified NPC for money transfers without opening an account within the implementation of the reform policy.

The main goal of creating the NPC is to increase the efficiency of the money transfer system, increase the transparency of operations and minimize transactional (operational) risks in order to ensure the stability of the financial and banking sector and create the prerequisites for safe money transfers in the country.

The advantages of introducing an NPC are increased transparency of cross-border money transfer operations without opening a bank account, minimizing operational risks for all NPC participants and in the conditions of insolvency of payment systems, eliminating speculative manipulations in the money transfer market and reducing human factors, ensuring a single exchange money transfer rates, the availability of an innovative solution that provides work with various payment systems using a single interface, improving the mechanism of protecting consumer rights, creating favorable conditions for crediting money transfers to the card accounts of the national system Korti Milli, which helps to increase deposits in the country’s credit organizations, creating a national consolidated analytical database on cross-border money transfers, which will improve the quality of statistics.