The share of non-cash payments in the total value reached 8.7%

Number of outstanding active cards of Azerbaijani banks increased in 2012 by 428,000 units or 9.3%, to 5,008,000 units. In the month of December last year, the number of cards diminished by 63 thousand units or 1.2%.

Thus, for 1000 people (under age) in the country there is an average of more than 834 active payment cards. (A year earlier the rate was at 757).

In January-December cardholders performed 57.2 million transactions totaling 8.83 billion manat. With the growth of the total number of payments by 12.3% and their volume by 22.1% compared to the same period in 2011, the number of credit card transactions increased by 48.7% to 4,193 thousand, and their turnover - 38% up to 1067 mln manats.

The main part of card transactions in the period of last year still fell on ATMs - 48 796 thousand transactions in the amount of 7629 mln manats. Of these, 98.6% was for operations connected with the withdrawal of cash. The share of non-cash settlements was about 8.7% of all transactions (+3.5% per year). Of these, 678 thousand were ATM transactions, which in turn are more than one and a half times lower as compared to the same period in 2011. At the same time non-cash transactions through POS terminals increased over the same period by 2.9 times to 4,324 thousand units.

Service cards are produced through 2260 ATMs and 36,860 POS-terminals. For a year, the number of ATMs increased by 6% and the number of POS terminals - by 178.8%.

As of January 1, 2013, in Baku there were established 1263 and 33,629 ATMs and POS-terminals respectively. In objects of service there operate 35 035 POS-terminals, including in Baku - 32 386 POS-terminals. - 15B -