In Armenia the number of plastic cards in the first quarter of 2018 increased by 14.9% to 1.785 million instead of the previous year's 10.8%.

Accordingly, the annual growth of plastic transactions has accelerated up to 38.6% making 440.6 billion drams.

According to the Central Bank of Armenia, local ArCa cards have increased by 12.8% to 591.6 thousand cards annually, and international Visa and MasterCard cards have increased respectively by 12.7% and 22.1%, up to 633.7 thousand and 514.8 thousand cards. Other international cards (mainly HSBC, AmEx and Diners Club) have dropped by 1.1% to 44,700 cards.

According to CB data, sharp increase in plastic transactions is conditioned by 14.1% increase in transactions with ArCa cards and 7 times growth of international cards, transactions with Visa cards increased by 0.7% to 26.9% and MasterCard - by 39.3% . The leader is Visa card- 188.8 billion drams, followed by MasterCard -123.6 billion and ArCa third with 84.4 billion drams and 43.8 billion drams in other cards.

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