YEREVAN, November 28. /ARKA/. The number of payment cards in Armenia in 2022  grew by almost 29% from the previous year to  over 3.1 million. Compared to 2011, their number grew by 226%, according to the Union of Banks of Armenia.

Some 47.5% were Visa cards, 23.2% -MasterCard cards, 23.6% were ArCa cards and 5.8% were other international payment cards.

Last year the payment cards were used to make 199 million transactions, by 46.7% more than in 2021. These transactions were worth over 4. 7 trillion drams, an increase of  34.6%  compared to January-December 2021.

About  61 million transactions were  cash and about  138 million  non-cash transactions. The share of non-cash transactions has been growing since 2020. For example, in December 2019 the ratio of cash transactions to non-cash transactions was 52% to 48%, and at the end of 2022 the ratio was 31% to 69%.

The cash transactions in 2022 amounted to over 3.2 trillion drams, while the  non-cash transactions amounted to over 1.5 trillion. At the end of 2022  cash transactions made 68%, and non-cash - 32% of the total.

In average one cash transaction was  52,950 drams (increase by 9.2%), and one non-cash transaction was  11,028 drams (decrease by 13.2%).

According to the Union of Banks of Armenia, payment cards issued by Armenian banks were used in 2022 to make 165,996,608 transactions (43.4% growth against 2021),  worth about 4 trillion drams.

During the reporting period, 14,975,554 transactions were performed with the cards of Armenian banks abroad (68.2% growth). Their volume amounted to 456,467 million drams (111.6% growth).

Also, 17,936,385 transactions were made with the cards of foreign banks in Armenia (64.9% growth). The volume of such transactions amounted to 339.141mln drams (33.9% growth).

The share of online transactions made  36.5% of the total (44.2% growth), the share of POS transactions - 38.3% (80.8% growth), and the share of ATM transactions - 25.2% (14.2% growth).

Of the 18 banks operating in Armenia,  16 banks issue ArCa cards, 15 – MasterCard cards, 13 – Visa cards, one bank - Amex, Diners Club, JCB and China Union cards and two banks  issue other cards. -0-