In Kazakhstan annual growth of the number of Visa issued cards constitute 15%

/Kazakhstan today, October 9, 03/ - In Kazakhstan annual marginal growth of visa payment cards issued constitutes not less than 15%. Lou Naumovskyi, the General Director and the head of Moscow representative office of Visa International, who is supervising CIS market informed about his fact today on October 9 in Almaty. As L. Naumovskyi informed, total number of Visa cards issued in the Republic reached 1.3 bn pieces. At present time, Kazakhstan occupies third place among CIS countries by the number of outstanding Visa cards, following after Russia and the Ukraine and is included in the list of top ten countries of Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, on the basis of number of cards per capita, Kazakhstan surpasses Russia. "This is so mainly thanks to Halyk Bank of Kazakhstan taking into account the fact that it owns more than 72 percent of all Visa cards issued in the Republic", - L. Naumovskyi stressed. According to him, there are 2.5 ths point of sales that accept cards using this international system. "In our opinion it is too small", - the head of representative office cited. Moreover, as he mentioned, "in general, the growth of usage and turnover of cards is not bad" in Kazakhstan. "Yet we believe it could be better", - L. Naumovskyi is convinced. According to the information of regional manager of Visa International on CIS countries, Alexandr Kalita, in Kazakhstan for the past 12 months (starting from September 2002 to September 2003) total growth of all transaction completed with the help of payment cards comprised 45%, out of which 34% was executed in trade - services network. "This is very serious increase. We hope that next year such growth rates remain the same", - A. Kalita said. Along with that, he noticed that the share of trade and services transactions executed with Visa cards in the Republic comprises a small share yet. In absolute terms, today turnover in trade and services network per year is approximately $100 mn", - the regional manager said. Also, A. Kalita informed that the number of Visa chip cards by the end of the current year at Kazakhstan market is likely to reach 100 th against current 67 th, and in Russia it will reach 1.5mn out of total number of outstanding cards of this particular payment system (9 mn pieces) In Kazakhstan, 16 banks are members of Visa, 5 of them are principal and 11 - associated ones. In total there are approximately 1.3 bn cardholders of Visa in 150 countries across the world. [2003-10-09]