YEREVAN, September 17. / ARKA /. Armenian banking cards were used in the second quarter of 2013 to make 265.3 billion drams worth transactions, up 13.8 % from the year earlier, the Central Bank of Armenia said in its second quarter bulletin.

The amount of cashless transactions made by use of banking cards grew by 19 percent from the same time span in 2012 to 26.2 billion drams, accounting for 10 % of the total amount of transactions made by using banking cards.

Of the total amount of cashless transactions 5.8 billion drams worth transactions were made by use of Internet, including 0.5 billion drams worth e-commerce and 5.3 billion drams worth card-to-card transfers.

Local ArCa cards were used to make 1,642,099 transactions worth 67.6 billion drams, by 6 percent or 4.2 billion drams less than in the second quarter of 2012, while the total number of transactions slashed by 10 percent or 174,000.

In the same time span VISA cards were used to make 2,159,630 transactions worth 137 billion drams, up 28 percent or 30 billion drams when compared with the second quarter last year.

MasterCard cards were used to make 893,247 transactions worth 41.4 billion drams, up 12 percent or 4.3 billion drams from the second quarter of 2012.

Other international plastic cards were used to make 292,445 transactions worth 19.1 billion drams, 12.3 % or 2.1 billion drams more than in the second quarter of 2012.

The total number of cards in circulation at the end of second quarter reached 1.5 million, an increase of 0.7 percent compared to the first quarter of 2013.

According to the Central Bank, by the end of the second quarter of 2013 the number of active local ArCa cards increased by 5 % from the first quarter 2013 to 545,000. The number of international cards grew by 5 % to about 873,000. VISA cards grew by 4% to 543,000 and MasterCard cards by 7% to 283,000.

By the end of the second quarter 19 ​​commercial banks out of 21 operating in the territory of Armenia issued and serviced banking cards. All were members of local ArCA payment system. ($ 1 - 409.41 drams). -0-