Data released by Shaparak, the company in charge of Iran's domestic payment network, show more than 132.5 million bank cards were used at least once in the ninth calendar month to May 21.
This was up 2% on the month before when it was 129.9 million, the company said in a report seen on its website.
Debit cards were the most common accounting for 95.27% (125 million) of the total active cards. Debit card use jumped 2.14% during the period.
More than 22.06% debit cards were issued by Bank Melli Iran, followed by Bank Sepah at 1194% and Bank Mellat and Bank Saderat with 11.27% and 10.96% share of the total, respectively.
The share of credit cards increased by 20.08% to 527,164 or 0.4% of the total cards used in the month. Ina previous report, the total number of active credit cards was 439,000 during the month to April 20.
Credit cards are still not a norm in Iran and for long were limited to VIPs. But now that seems to be changing. CBI policy of promoting credit cards as an instrument for microloan is influencing banks to rethink.
Bank Melli Iran was the issuer of 87.2% of total credit cards, followed by Bank Saderat Iran with 2.86% and Bank Sepah 2.79%. Pre-paid cards posted 1.65% decrease during the month.
The company said 7.06 million pre-paid cards were used at least once during the month. An estimated 17.43% of pre-paid cards were issued by Bank Melli Iran, Bank Mellat was next with 13.66% followed by Parsian Bank 9.34%.
An estimated 3.547 billion retail transactions were processed by the main payment network in the second calendar month to May 21.
The transactions were worth 6,677 trillion rials ($20.93 billion) – up 10.9% in volume and 22.77% in value on the month before, the company reported.
Collective value of transactions jumped 39.07% on the same month of last year when 3.02 billion transactions worth 4,801 trillion rials ($15.05b) were processed. In volume terms it showed 17.44% growth y/y.
The nationwide network failed to process 301.7 million transactions during the month – up 18% from the first month of the year. As per the report, users were responsible for 88% of failed transactions. Issuer banks were the cause of nearly 9.7% of failed transactions -- up 6% on the month before.
