YEREVAN, June 25. /ARKA/. Volume of all card transactions totalled 225.6 billion drams in the first quarter of 2013, a 25.5% increase against the same period of the year before, says the quarterly bulletin of Armenia’s Central Bank for Q1.
Non-cash transactions constituted 9.1% of the overall volume of card transactions and amounted to a total of about 20.6 billion drams, an increase of 15.3% compared to Q1 2012.
Online transactions amounted to 4.8 billion drams in the period, including 0.8bln drams in e-commerce and 3.9bln drams in card-to-card transactions.
In the period, a total of 1,442,884 transactions were effected via local ArCa cards for a total of 56 billion drams. It is a reduction of 5% or 3.2 billion drams compared to the same period of last year; number of transactions dropped by 86,000 or 6%.
Number of VISA international card transactions was 1,835,536; the total amount was 117.7 billion drams in the period, an increase of 55% or 41.8bln drams.
MasterCard transactions amounted to a total of 35.8 billion drams (increase of 17% or 5.2bln) ; the number of these transactions was 830,301 in the period.
Other international card transactions (254,297) amounted to 16bln drams, increase of 11% or 1.6bln drams compared to Q1 2012.
There were a total of 1.4 million cards in circulation as of the end of the reporting period, an increase of 5% against Q4 2012.
According to the Central Bank, number of local ArCa cards grew by 5% to 518,000 by the end of Q1 against Q4 2012. At the same time, number of international cards rose by 5% to 873,000, including 543,000 VISA cards (4% increase) and 283,000 MasterCards (7% increase).
As of the end of Q4 2012, out of 21 Armenian commercial banks, 19 are members of united ArCa payment system and offer plastic card services to their clients. ($1=411.64drams).–0–
