How does Azerbaijan use plastic cards?

4,385,000 plastic cards had been issued in Azerbaijan by 1 June 2011, and this is 265,000 or 6.4% more than in 1 May 2010. According to information released by Central Bank of Azerbaijan, of the whole number of issued plastic cards 2,480,000 were mini social cards, 1,306,000 - mini salary cards, 460,000 – debit cards and 139,000 were credit cards. During 5 months of the current year 20, 484,000 transactions were made via plastic cards, with the volume of these transactions amounting to 2 ,750,000,000 manats. This figure shows increase by 17.9% in comparison with 9.9% of the previous year. 19,390,000 transactions were carried out via debit cards, and this made 94.7% of all plastic card transactions.
The volume of debit card transactions amounted to 2,458,000,000 manats, which makes 89.4% of the whole volume of plastic card transactions. 1,093,000 transactions were made via credit cards, and the volume of the transactions amounted to 292,000,000 manats. An average volume of transactions made by debit card comes to 126.8 manats. For credit cards this figure is 267.2 manats. Let’s note that money cashing constitute 18, 558,000 or 90,6% of all operations made with plastic cards.
The volume of these operations amounted to 2,500,000,000 manats, and this made 90,9% of all operations carried out via plastic cards. The following conclusion can be drown from the above stated information. The share of non cash transactions carried out via plastic cards makes up 9%, and this means that plastic cards are used in Azerbaijan mainly for the money cashing operations.

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