ArmInfo. As of October 1, 2024, the plastic card market in Armenia had 3.964 million cards, indicating an annual growth of 11%. Over the past three years, the number of microprocessing cards with an NFC chip has increased by 2.4 times, with an annual growth of 22.4%. The total number of these cards now exceeds 3 million, accounting for 76.4% of all cards in circulation. This is evidenced by data from the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia.
Among the microprocessing cards with NFC chips, Visa accounts for the most - 58.8% or 1.782 million units, Mastercard accounts for 29.2% or 883.6 thousand units, other international cards make up 9.5% or 286.7 thousand units, and the remaining 2.5% or 77.2 thousand units are local ArCa cards. It is noteworthy that among the microprocessing cards, the local ArCa showed impressive annual growth this time - 13.4 times. In comparison, Visa increased moderately by 21%, Mastercard by 12.3%, and other foreign cards (including HSBC cards, AmEx, Diners Club, MIR, UnionPay) continued to grow at a high rate of 37.5%.
A similarly impressive annual growth is also recorded for virtual cards - 2.3 times to 272,892 units (7% of the total number of cards). Until mid-2022 these were only Visa, but since the third quarter of the same year, Masterбard also appeared. This annual growth of virtual cards was largely supported by a noticeable increase in Masterбard - 18.3 times to 13,458 units. However, the continued dominance of virtual Visa (95.1%) also ensured a significant annual growth of 2.2 times, reaching 259,434 units. At the same time, cards with a magnetic strip, the number of which decreased by 31% until mid-2022, began to gradually grow from month to month after July 1 of the same year. This was when the updated law on non-cash payments came into force, requiring payments to be made exclusively by non-cash means.
However, their current number of 630,991 units has significantly decreased due to an annual decline of 25.3%, moving away from the previous threshold of over a million units (which was the case before April 2020). This decrease is primarily attributed to their accelerated replacement with microprocessing ones. As a result, the share of magnetic stripe cards in the total number has dropped from 42% to 16% in 2020-2024. It is important to note that the annual growth of magnetic stripe cards was driven by local ArCa cards, which were predominantly provided to pensioners to receive pensions and make non-cash payments because of their affordability. Currently, there are now 607,798 ArCa cards with magnetic stripes, a nine fold increase from the previous year.
The share of hybrid cards has already decreased to 0.8% of the total number, amounting to 30,602 units with an annual decline of almost 5 times. This decrease was primarily due to a significant reduction in Visa and local ArCa cards by 89-90% and Mastercard by 64.1%. There are 123,276 co-badged ArCa-MIR cards, accounting for 3.1% of the total number of cards. The annual growth of these cards has sharply accelerated from 16.2% to 9 times, with the jump recorded in the middle of this year. The primary driver of the annual growth in the total number of cards continues to be Visa cards, which increased by 23.7% over the year to 2.051 million units. This increase allowed Visa to strengthen its dominant position from 46.3% to 51.8%. Masterбard cards only increased by 8% year-on-year to 919,102 units. As a result, their share in the total number slightly decreased from 23.8% to 23.2%. Meanshile, local ArCa cards experienced a decline in annual growth from 15.3% 18.1% decline. The total number of ArCa cards amounted to 686,589 units, moving them to a position below Masterбard both in number and in share coverage, accounting for 17.3%.
However, other foreign cards (including HSBC, AmEx, Diners Club, MIR, UnionPay) showed much higher annual growth rates compared to Visa and Masterбard combined, increasing by 32.4% to 306,512 units. This further boosted their share in the total number from 6.5% to 7.7%. Debit cards remain dominant in the overall cards structure - 65.7% or 2.603 million units, followed by payment cards - 33.9% or 1.344 million units. In contrast, the share of credit cards has decreased to 0.4% or 16,838 units. Moreover, the number of debit and payment cards continues to rise at rates of 11.3% and 14.3% per annum, respectively.
As for credit cards, their number saw a significant reduction by half in 2022, but began to increase again only from mid-2023. However, a year later there was another sharp decline, this time by 4 times. Until October 2022, Visa held the lead only in debit and settlement cards, while Masterбard in credit cards. By the end of the same year, Visa had surpassed Masterбard from the leading position in credit cards, and continues to hold the lead despite a significant decline in the current year. As of October 1, 2024, there are already 1.248 million Visa debit cards, 796 thousand Visa settlement cards and 7.5 thousand Visa credit cards.
It should be noted that in mid-November 2023, the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia granted permission to two Armenian banks - Acba Bank and Converse Bank - to participate in the UnionPay International (UPI) foreign settlement and payment system. Later, in 2024, Evocabank also received permission to join this system. However, we remind you that Acba Bank has been servicing UPI system cards since October 2019. Acba and Converse started issuing cards of this system in May 2024, and Evocabank began issuing such cards in September of the same year.
