International Property News

Banks issue over 8.62 million cards by end-2007

16th March 2008

The number of payment cards issued by banks in the Czech Republic rose by nearly 760,000 last year to 8.62 million, data from the Bank Card Association (SBK) have shown.

The number of issued credit cards increased by 327,000 year-on-year to more than 1.2 million.

The number of payment chip cards rose to 5.8 million at end-2007 from nearly 3.5 million a year earlier.

Czechs withdrew cash worth more than Kc531bn from automatic teller machines (ATMs) last year, a growth of 12 percent year-on-year. The number of ATM withdrawals rose to 144 million in 2007.

The Czech payment cards market is still dominated by debit cards. However, it has seen a boom of credit cards in recent years which dominate the markets in Western Europe and above all in the U.S.A.