August 09, 2019
The government has canceled its previously announced plan to require all drivers to use cards when they buy gasoline after August 11.
So long as gasoline is not rationed, the plan to use bank debit cards as fuel cards is pointless and will not be implemented for now, the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company announced.
The Central Bank of Iran had announced earlier that the bank debit cards could be used as fuel cards, and last week NIOPDC recommended that car and motorcycle owners use their old fuel cards, left over when rationing ended a few years ago, at least once by July 22 to make sure there was no problem with their card.
The company said that, as of August 11, car owners would be able to buy fuel at the pumps only with a fuel card or a bank credit card. It was assumed the government was trying to track down who was buying immense sums of fuel and then to investigate them as possible smugglers taking fuel to neighboring expensive gasoline countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey.
Illegal trade in fuel in and across the border regions, going on for decades, is reported to be as much as 20 million liters per day or one-fifth of all of Iran’s gasoline output. Since the collapse of the rial, such smuggling has shot up because the profits to be made from the trade are now much greater.