Tuesday, May 18 2010 10:48
Over Q1 2010 plastic cards in Armenia grew in number by 5,7% to 612419
ArmInfo. By the end of Q1 2010, the total number of active plastic cards in Armenia amounted to 612419, having increased by 5,7% as compared with Q4 2009. The press service of the Central Bank of Armenia told ArmInfo that the number of ArCa active plastic cards grew by 3,5% (by 9926 cards) to 292090 cards as compared with Q1 2010, Visa - by 4,3% (by 8647 cards) to 210236 cards, MasterCard - by 25,8% (by 15769 cards) to 76877 cards.
According to the source, the volume of operations with the plastic cards grew by 25% (by 21.5 bln AMD), and the number of operations - by 28% (by 508197). In particular, a total of 1128175 operations (44% annual growth) worth 43 bln AMD (38% annual growth) were carried out with ArCa cards, 689353 operations worth 39 bln AMD (26,9% annual growth) with Visa, 279803 operations worth 14.6 bln AMD (9,6% annual growth) with MasterCards.
The total volume of operations implemented via the cards amounted to 106 bln drams in the Q1 2010, 7.6 bln drams of which was the share of the non-cash operations (growth by 16,5% as against Q1 2009). The total of 34 new ATM started functioning in the Q1 2010 as a result of which their total number reached 736, 677 of which give service to ArCa local cards. The total number of POS-terminal was 2815 by the end of March 2010, 446 of which in the banks and their branches.
To note, as of the end of Q1 2010 21 banks were delivering plastic cards and services, 20 of which are members of "ArCa" payment system.
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