Businesses Forced to Acquire New POS Devices: 'Haykakan Žhoghovurd'

'Haykakan Žhoghovurd' newspaper reports that businesses in Armenia find themselves in a dire situation. The reason is the 'Cashless Transactions Law' that came into effect on July 1. Samson Grigoryan, coordinator of the 'Suspend' civil movement, commented on the issue in an interview with the newspaper, saying: 'Due to the Central Bank's requirement, banks refuse to activate post-terminals on the cash register devices owned by businesses and are demanding the purchase of different model devices that have been imported only after the Velvet Revolution.'

According to Rustam Badasyan, the head of the RA State Revenue Committee, there are currently 61,921 new generation cash registers, of which only 12,546 have the capability to accept cashless payments. 'New generation cash registers mean that anyone who owns a cash register can apply to the bank and activate the capability to receive payments through a post-terminal. Out of 49,375, this service has not been activated,' Badasyan announced. He added that there are 514 old generation cash registers remaining, which are in violation of the law, and businesses will face fines or other sanctioning measures.

Samson Grigoryan suggests that the responsible authorities resolve the issue before July 1, otherwise businesses will have to carry out disobedience actions. 'Just for that function, a few years ago, the SRD compelled all businesses to acquire this device. Everyone had to pay between 100,000 to 150,000 drams for this device. I personally acquired three devices and spent 450,000 drams; now I have to throw them in the trash and spend another 450,000 drams on three new ones,' our interlocutor expressed his frustration. In other words, it is necessary to determine what the governmental bodies want, rather than allowing each head to dictate their whims.

For further details, refer to today's issue of the newspaper.