Active plastic cards in Armenia grew in number by 31,3% in 2009

Armenian Card CJSC told ArmInfo that over IV qt 2009 alone banks issued by 17092 cards more than in III qt (61096). The share of local ArCa cards in the total number of cards was 62% (279715 cards), Visa - 25% (111639 cards), MasterCard - 13% (59645 cards). As compared with 2008, the biggest growth in the number of cards was demonstrated by ArCa - 42%, then MasterCard - 33%, and Visa - 11%.

At the end of 2009, the volume of transactions with cards issued within Armenian Card system, amounted to 331.2 bln AMD (6823182 transactions), having increased by 35,3% as compared with 2008. The volume of noncash operations grew by 17,3% to 38.7 bln AMD (994476 transactions). At the same time, the volume of transactions at Armenian Card service points totalled 315.3 bln AMD (6566176 transactions) in 2009 as against 231.8 bln (4807397 transactions) in 2008. The share of noncash operations in 2009 made up 7,3%, or 23 bln AMD of the total volume of transactions.

In 2009 the average monthly volume of transactions grew by 36% to 26.3 bln AMD (547181 transactions), of them 1.914 bln AMD being noncash (68114 transactions). As of 1 Jan 2010 there were 2204 trade and service points within Armenian Card (bancomats exclusive). The number of POS-terminals in these points was 2554. At the same time, 2534 of the total number of POS-terminals served ArCa cards, 1705 - Visa, and 2137 - MasterCard.

As of 1 Jan 2010, there were 3128 terminals in Armenia, including 574 bancomats as against 452 bancomats as of 1 Jan 2009.