History
Shetab was introduced in 2002, and now all card issuing banks in Iran are required to connect to the system. In 2002, when the system was introduced there were at approximately 2.8 million domestic debit cards in circulation, of those approximately 530,000 were capable of using the Shetab system.
In 2005, the government obliged the Central Bank of Iran and the Iranian banks, mostly state owned, to set up all the necessary infrastructures (regulatory, hardware, software) for fully launching e-money in Iran by March 2005. While this plan has not yet fully materialised, local debit/credit cards are now commonplace and have removed the main obstacle to the growth of e-commerce (in the national scale) as well as the full roll out of e-government initiatives. By 2010 it is expected that 12 million cards would be issued, all of which work with the Shetab system.
The Agricultural Bank (Keshavarzi Bank) was the first Iranian bank to connect to the Shetab system. Saman Bank was the first bank to introduce online banking services in Iran. Since, it has been at the forefront of expansion and enhancement of electronic banking.
Read more about this topic: Shetab Banking System
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