Data published by Iran's domestic payment network's supervisory body, Shaparak, show 10% monthly growth in the number of active bank cards in the last month of the last fiscal year that ended on March 20.
More than 139 million bank cards, including debit cards, credit cards and prepaid cards, were used at least once during the month period. Despite the growth, the proportion of cards was almost unchanged, with debit cards accounting for 94% of the total, followed by prepaid cards at 5% and credit cards less than one percent.
According to the data, the total number of active bank cards was 124 million during the same period last year.
The number of debit cards reached 130 million, up 9.2% on the month before. State-run banks accounted for the highest number of debit cards during the period. Bank Melli Iran issued 22% of the debit cards, followed by Bank Sepah with 12.19%. Two privatize lenders Bank Mellat with 11% and Bank Saderat with 10% were next.
However, the number of credit cards posted the largest growth at 32.6% to reach 652,400. Bank Melli managed to increase its share of the credit card market to 83% from 60% in the previous months. Bank Sepah was second in terms of active credit cards accounting for 4.3% of the total, followed by Bank Saderat 2.59% and Post Bank 2.17%.
Credit cards are still not a norm in Iran and for long were limited to VIPs. But now that seems to be changing. The initiative of the Central Bank of Iran to promote credit cards as an instrument for microloan has encouraged commercial banks to rethink.
Private banks are still reluctant to issue credit cards, as reported by Shaparak Company.
Prepaid cards posted 17.7% growth in number to reach 7.4 million. Prepaid cards, also known as gift cards, issued by banks are popular during the Norouz, the Iranian New Year, celebrations.
Bank Melli leads in terms of prepaid cards, alone accounting for 17% of the total. Bank Mellat and Parsian Bank rank after with 14% and 9.5%, respectively.
More than 3.6 billion retail transactions were reported by the e-payment settlement network in the last month of the calendar year.
The transactions were worth 7,439.51 trillion rials ($27.5 billion), up 11.84% in volume and 16.95% in value from the month before, Shaparak website said.
The rise in e-transactions is apparently due to the tendency of consumers to buy gifts and new clothes in the run-up to the annual New Year holiday season. Observers say the upward trajectory is a promising sign that businesses are slowly but steadily returning to the pre-Covid era.
Shaparak report also reflected on bank performance in terms of the total number of processed e-transactions during the period, as per which Bank Melli Iran was at the top with 1.3 billion transactions in the month to March 20.
Bank Mellat ranked second with 1.1 billion transactions, followed by Bank Sepah with 772 million, Bank Saderat 708 million and Bank Keshavarzi (Agro Bank) 485 million.
Parsian Bank topped the list of private banks in terms monthly transactions handling 230 million transactions. Saman Bank and Bank Pasargad Iran were next with 216 million and 199 million, respectively.
