Monday, June 14 2010 15:41
Plastic cards market in Armenia up 10% since early 2010
ArmInfo. The number of plastic cards issued by the ArCA member-banks grew 10% since the beginning of the year to 495.7 thousand cards and outstripped the indicator for the same period of 2009 by 30%. The Armenian Card told ArmInfo, in May banks issued 15495 cards, which was by 19995 cards less than in April.
Over the five months of 2010 MasterCard plastic cards grew 32.5% to 79040 cards as of June 2010 or 16% of total active cards issued by ArCa member-banks. The number of Visa International plastic cards grew 9.4% to 122139 cards, whereas the number of local plastic cards ArCa grew 5.2% to 294,478 cards. The share in total was 59.4%.
Transactions were made with 332,000 of the active cards in May 2010 (67% of total active cards). As of June 1 2010 the number of the commerce/service and cash dispensing points (exclusive of ATMs) operating in the ArCa system totaled 2416, including 314 dispensing points. There were 2756 POS- terminals at the commerce/service points, including 399 at cash-dispensing points. 2700 of total POS-terminals served ArCA cards, 1772 - Visa International and 2335 MasterCard, and 310 POS-terminals served American Express cards. In May cash dispensing and commerce/service points grew in number by 25 versus April. The number of POS-terminals grew by 34. As of June 1 2010 there were 630 active ATMs, which was by 56 ATMs more than in the beginning of the year and by 133 more than a year ago.
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