Monday, November 14 2011 21:11
Armenian commercial banks - members of ArCa national processing increase number of cards 87.1%
ArmInfo. Armenian commercial banks - members of ArCa national processing issued a total of 36543 cards in Oct 2011, which was 87.1% more than in Oct 2010. The number of active cards totaled 723.6 thousand as of late October 2011, while a year ago, this indicator totaled 545.7 thousand cards (a 32.6% Y-o-Y growth).
Armenian Card told ArmInfo that banks issued 17998 ArCa cards (up 2.7fold), MasterCard - 10,961 (2.2fold), Visa - 7584 cards (up 6.2%).
MasterCard was the leader in terms of the annual growth of the number of active cards (Oct 2011 versus the same period of 2010) to 153.8 thousand cards as of Nov 1. Visa International active cards grew 30.6% to 195.4 thousand and ArCa - 24.6 % to 374.4 thousand.
By data of ArCA, 479.2 thousand cards or 66.2% of total number of active cards were used in operations in October. In particular, 267.2 thousand or 71% of total ArCa active cards were used in operations (up 17.3% versus Oct 2010). 122 thousand or 63% of total Visa active cards (35.8% growth) and 90,000 or 59% of total MasterCard active cards (68.3% growth) were used in operations. According to the Armenian Card, as of Nov 1 2011 the number of POS-Terminals operating within Armenian Card system in the sales and service points totaled 3880 (up 42.8% versus Oct 2010), with 366 being installed at cash dispensing points (up 12.6%), and 3514 - at sales points (46.8%). As of Nov 1 2011 there were a total of 790 ATMs in Armenia, which was 19.5% more than a year ago.
The majority shareholders of ArCa are the Central Bank of Armenia, ACBA Credit Agricole Bank, Armeconombank and Ardshininvestbank. The other commercial banks hold by 2% stake in ArCa.
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