The Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan announced that it will discontinue the AniPay mobile application and the anipay.az website from 4 March 2026, positioning the move as part of efforts to broaden competition in the digital payments market and promote the development of payment services. From that date, the central bank expects comparable services to continue through financial sector participants, noting that AniPay functionalities are already available in mobile banking applications. The central bank framed the closure as part of its strategy to promote payment services and to enable banks and other payment service providers to participate more actively in the market.