Thursday, May 12 2011 18:01

VTB Bank (Armenia) awards 500 thsd AMD to owner of milestone Visa card


ArmInfo. VTB Bank (Armenia) has issued the 100000th card of the international payment system Visa, retaining the leading position in the card market of Armenia. The milestone 100000th Visa Electron card was issued in March, and its happier owner is Khoren Abrahamyan, customer of VTB Bank (Armenia), employee of South Caucasus Railway CJSC.

At today's award ceremony timed to the issue of the Visa milestone card, VTB Bank (Armenia) awarded a certificate worth 500 thsd AMD to the owner of the 100000th card. The Bank also gave a right to the winner to make use of the Visa card at a zero interest rate within a year.

Irina Kamkhadze, Manager for Visa Business Development in CIS, congratulated the bank on this event and pointed out that Visa and VTB Bank (Armenia) have a long-lasting and fruitful cooperation, as a result of which numerous interesting projects on card products and services were implemented. At present the bank offers Visa Еleсtron, Visa Classic, Visa Gold, Visa Business products to its private and corporate customers.

Kamkhadze said that Visa is currently working out several new priority directions, particularly, development of such bonus card products as Visa Platinum, Visa Infinity and chip cards certified for issuing. The company will also hold events dedicated to activation and increase of use of payment tools by trade and service enterprises.

She said that Armenia is an important market for Visa: "Our company is ready to cooperate with all parties interested in development of noncash payments". According to Visa, over Q4 2010 as compared with Q4 2009, the number of ATMs in Armenia grew by 3%, and the growth of trade enterprises accepting cards for payment made up 36%. Over the given period the number of noncash payments in Armenia increased by 46%.

For his part, Deputy Director General of VTB Bank (Armenia) Mher Grigoryan stressed that the card business is the most relevant direction not only for VTB Bank (Armenia), but also for the banking system of Armenia in general. He pointed out that Armenia has a huge potential for development of noncash payments, and the fulfillment of the potential will raise the effectiveness of the banking business and stimulate economic growth.

Director of Retail Business Development Department of VTB Bank (Armenia) Artak Khachatryan said that in 2010 the number of the cards issued by the bank was doubled - from 50 thsd to 100 thsd cards. The bank hopes to retain similar growth in 2010. Dynamic growth is observed for ATMs and POS terminals as well.

Khachatryan said that the share of the bank in the card market of Armenia is 15% today. In 2011 the bank is going to launch several new card projects for the Armenian market at once, particularly, bones, co-branding and chip projects. The bank will also introduce a scoring system for large-scale emission of credit cards.

When touching on the salary card projects, the deputy director general of the bank pointed out that they are the most powerful channel of sales today. Their share in the total number of active cards of the bank is 70%. Grigoryan thinks that the salary projects are especially topical from the viewpoint of fiscal policy.

According to the Review "Armenian Banks in Card Business" prepared by the Agency of Rating Marketing Information (ArmInfo), as of 1 October 2010 the number of active cards was 685 thsd. 44.7% of them or about 306 thsd cards fell on ArCa local cards, 36.4% or almost 250 thsd cards fell on Visa and 18.9% or about 130 thsd cards fell on MasterCard. The total number of active cards annually grew by 32%. The number of the local cards grew by 20%, Visa - by 36%, and MasterCard - by 60%.
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