YEREVAN, August 25–As of the end of the second quarter of 2010, 20 commercial banks of the Republic of Armenia issued and serviced credit cards, 19 out of which were members of one uniform payment system, ArCA.

According to the press center of the Central Bank of Armenia, at the end of the second quarter of this year there are 638,002 credit cards in circulation. This number exceeds the indicator of the last quarter by 4.2 percent. Non-cash payments of 7 percent were attributed to credit card transactions. This year there has also been an increase by 31 percent in the volume of credit card transactionscompared with 2009.

As of the end of June, the number of operating ArCa cards increased by 1.3 percent compared with the end of previous quarter and now totals 295,735.

The number of cards used in the international system during the accounting period extends to 6.8 percent. In addition to that, the number of MasterCard (85,387 issued) and VISA (222,787 issed) cards has increased by 11 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

The total volume of card transactions in the second quarter of 2010 has increased in comparison with the same period of 2009 by 33 percent.

Meanwhile, a recorded 1,320,746 transactions amounting to 5 billion dram have been made with ArCa cards, which exceeds the indicator of the volume of the first half of 2009 by 35 percent and the quantity by 34 percent.

In the second quarter, the number of transactions carried out with VISA cards was 869,687 (50 billion dram), whereas the number of operations carried out with MasterCard cards was 363,246 (19 billion drams). In comparison with the second quarter of 2009, the given indicators increased by 39 percent and 23.6 percent respectively.

In the second quarter of 2010, 236,567 transactions had been carried out with other international cards in the amount of 11 billion dram, which exceeds the similar indicator of 2009 with 1.4 billion dram.

Yerevan Report