Wednesday, November 30 2011 18:13
70% of AmEx Gold card transactions are payments
ArmInfo. Almost 70% of ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank's AmEx Gold transactions are payments. For other cards this index is 10% on an average, Stepan Gishyan, CEO of ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank (the executlve partner of American Express in Armenia and issuer of AmEx cards), said during a press-conference on Wednesday.
Gishyan did not specify how many AmEx Gold cards his bank has issued in the past year. He just said that the cards make up 26% of the bank's non-cash card transactions.
Head of the Card Center of ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank Lilit Gevorgyan said that the bank has issued much more AmEx Gold cards than it was going to when first introducing them in Armenia (1,000 cards).
Gishyan said that the AmEx Gold package includes services by the world's leading insurance companies (insurance of purchases, against travel accidents, etc.), a credit line with a 50-day grace period, bonus programs, like Membership Rewards and Selects (discounts in trade chain and restaurants in Armenia and abroad).
ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank is the only bank in Armenia serving Visa, MasterCard, AmEX and ArCa cards. The contract with American Express was signed in Aug 2010. The annual fee for an AmEx card is 90,000 AMD. The card is accepted by all the ATMs and POS-terminals of ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank and its partner banks.
According to ArmInfo's Armenian Bank in Card Business bulletin, as of Oct 1 2011 there were over 800,000 active cards in Armenia. Half of them were local ArCa cards. ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank has 106,400 active cards (2nd place): 55,400 ArCa, 34,600 Visa and 16,400 MasterCard. In Jan-Sept 2011 the amount of the bank's card transactions totalled 70bln AMD (1st place). The bank has 134 ATMs and 1,702 POS-terminals (1st place).