Bank of Irad Clearing House
The Bank of Irad Clearing House is the interbank payment system of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), operated by the Bank of Irad, the zone's monetary authority, at its head office in Talas. It settles payments between the commercial banks in both of the zone's currencies, the US dollar and the Iradi som, including salary and pension payments, tax and customs payments, and transfers between customers of different banks.[1]
History
The clearing house was set up in 1996, three years after the Banking and Commercial Currency Act made the dollar legal tender and introduced the som. At first it settled checks and batch payments once a day. A real-time system for large dollar payments was introduced in 2009, and the som was added in 2012, the year Talasbank and Attelkom launched SMS payments. The system has run with backup sites in Nurzhan since 2010.[1]
Role in the financial system
The clearing house handles payments inside the ISEZ only. Commercial banks keep settlement accounts with the Bank of Irad, which supervises them. Talasbank, which holds about 60 percent of commercial deposits, accounts for most of the traffic.[2] Payments abroad are not cleared through it. Because Irad's status limits access to international payment systems, banks settle foreign payments through correspondent banks in Almaty and Istanbul. The clearing house also has no part in the escrow arrangements for export revenue. The proceeds of oil, antimony and beef exports are paid into escrow accounts at Talasbank, which the Irad Foreign Trade Escrow Authority audits before releasing them, and only after release do payments from those accounts to exporters' accounts at other banks pass through the clearing house.[3] The Bank of Irad's chairman since 2010 has been Azamat Temirov.
References
- ^ Bank of Irad (2023). Annual Report. Talas.
- ^ Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad (2023). Banking and Finance Directory. Talas.
- ^ Irad Foreign Trade Escrow Authority (2022). Annual Audit of Export Escrow Accounts. Talas.