STEFI system to be launched between Azerbaijan and Ukraine

The Secured Transferof Electronic Financial Information system (STEFI) will soon be launched with Ukraine, Azerpost informed. According to information, launching of the system is delayed because of the problems arising on the head server of the Universal Postal Union (UPU). As it was informed, at present UPU specialists are working to resolve technical problems. Afterwards, the system will be put into operation. The system was tested for the first time earlier this year. It is satisfactory. However, careful checking is required to run it in trial operation.The launch of the system in the trial operation will allow the Azerbaijani postal operator to offer two types of money transfer services. It is a traditional form of remittances which take three days, with money transfers to be finished in three hours. A legal document has already been signed with Ukraine. A similar document was also signed with Belarus. Azerbaijan intends to apply the STEFI system in the direction of the five countries by late 2011. Today, the main traffic in Azerbaijan is accounted for by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. UPU's International Financial Services Regional Technical Support Center was created in Moscow in June. It will deal with technical support while using international money transfers. UPU's International Financial Services Regional Technical Support Center also provides consulting and technological assistance in using UPU's international money transfers - IFS, STEFI, IFSLight, QCS.

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