Finance

Finance

Azerbaijan increases number of plastic cards by 9%

09 December 2011 12:28 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev â€“ APA-Economics. As of November 1, 2011, the total number of plastic cards in Azerbaijan made 4,471,000 units, up 368,000 or 8.9% compared to a previous year. The Central Bank of Azerbaijan says 2,449,000 of the cards are mini social, 1,305,000 â€“ salary, 553,000 - debit, 164,000 â€“ credit cards.

In January-October of 2011, 41,814,000 operations were conducted on plastic cards, the volume of transactions amounted to AZN 5,850 mln. Over the last year these figures increased by 10.9% and 21.5% respectively.

The number of debit card transactions was 39,528,000, representing 94.5% of the total. The volume of transactions on debit cards made AZN 5,217 mln, which equals 90.4% of the total. In turn, 2,287,000 operations were conducted via credit cards, the volume of transactions made AZN 633 mln. The average volume of a single transaction for debit cards amounted to AZN 132, this figure makes AZN 276.8 on credit cards.

Note that, 37,656,000 of operations conducted with plastic cards were related to cash withdrawal. The volume of these transactions made AZN 5,291 mln, which is 90.4% of the total. This suggests that the cards are mainly used for cash withdrawals in Azerbaijan.