Main trends
Mobile applications in Azerbaijan are widely available and actively used by the population. The trending and leading ones are WhatsApp among young people and adults, both women and men, and Instagram which, according to We Are Social (Digital Profile 2019), is mainly used by men (67 percent) over women (33 percent).
Services such as top-up cards, online banking and e-commerce are widely practiced. Since December 2013 holders of bank cards serviced by the AzeriCard processing centre were able to use SMS notification services not only within national mobile operators (Bakcell, Azercell Telecom and Azerfon), but also outside the country. The service has become available in the networks of 800 mobile operators in 190 countries. Yet Individuals tend to make the majority of payments in cash and even some enterprises make transactions outside the banking system.
Although most of the major banks offer mobile banking, it is not yet well-developed from the customer side. One of the reasons is that at this stage, bank customers still don’t completely trust the new technology, and prefer to conduct banking operations in a traditional way by going to bank. However, the service is quite safe and securely protected as banks are very careful in ensuring the reliability and security of their services.