Wednesday, March 17 2010 15:49
Areximbank-GPB to increase number of issued cards till the end of 2010
ArmInfo. Areximbank-Gazprombank Group is expected to increase the number of issued plastic cards to 69,000 till the end of 2010, Ruben Khachatryan, Director General of Areximbank- GPB, told ArmInfo.
Earlier this year the number of the bank's active cards totaled 17752, including 90% were Visa and 10% were MasterCard. Alongside with this, the bank leadership is expected to increase the number of ATMs by 5 to 47 as well as to install 36 new POS-terminals increasing their number to 125. Starting April 2009 Areximbank-GPB under an agreement with Armenian Card is serving local cards ArCA through its own processing system. By data of Armenian Card, within Feb 2010 cash operations with ArCa cards in the processing network of Areximbank-GPB grew 69.2% versus Jan and the number of transactions grew 53%. In total, operations with ArCa cards in the processing system of Areximbank-GPB amounted to 50.5 million drams in Feb (including non-cash transactions - 4 million drams), and the number of transactions totaled 2636 (non-cash - 262).
The bank has recently started providing discount cards of IAPA and Countdown systems for 35,000 drams and 15,000 drams, respectively. A full package (Visa or MasterCard + discount card IAPA) the IAPA discount card will be available for 15,000 drams. R. Khachatryan said 100 international packages of IAPA cards and 300 Countdown cards will be available till the end of the year.
The bank joined VISA International in 2002 and MasterCard in 2005. The bank serves the plastic cards through its own processing center. The sole shareholder of Areximbank - GazpromBank Group CJSC is GazpromBank OJSC (Russia).