YEREVAN, August 8. /ARКА/. The Armenian government today decided to increase the cashback amount for pensioners who use their pension cards to pay for purchases and services from the current 10% to 12%.

Labor and Social Affairs Minister Narek Mkrtchyan said that the maximum cashback is to be increased from 5,000 to 6,000 drams.

He said that as of July, about 240 thousand beneficiaries have benefited from thsi scheme. According to him, from the beginning of the program through August of this year inclusive, about 9 billion drams have already been paid out as cashback.

“The total turnover of non-cash transactions made by pensioners and other beneficiaries since the beginning of the program is more than 120 billion drams. We have also managed to change their behavior. In the first months of the program launch the number of people receiving pensions on their pension cards was within 300 thousand; now it is about 540 thousand, of whom 44% use the cashback scheme,” Mkrtchyan said.

The minister said that at the same time it is proposed to cancel the cashback for utility bills, since initially one of the goals of the program was to help reduce the shadow economy.

“When we launched this program together with other government agencies, we set ourselves the goal of promoting cashless payments, and utility bills are completely beyond the shadows. Therefore, due to the fact that our pensioners and beneficiaries began to actively make cashless payments by their cards, we decided to make this change,” Mkrtchyan noted.

The scheme has been in effect since July 1, 2022. Pensioners and beneficiaries using cards of the Armenian partner receive cashback in the amount of 10% of the total amount spent in the previous month when making utility payments and non-cash purchases, but not more than 5 thousand drams per month. ($1 - 388.21 drams) -0-