Retail banking activity showed an improvement in the first three quarters of 2014, illustrated by the 20.79% year-on-year (y-o-y) surge to 2.39M in the total number of payment cards by September 2014. Notably, residents’ payment cards increased by 23.35% (y-o-y) by September 2014 to 2.32M (or 97% of total payment cards). However, non-residents payment cards (or 3% of total card payments) declined by 29.87% yearly to 66,902.
As for the breakdown by type, debit cards continued to be the most popular type of card payment accounting for 50.7%, of the total, by September 2014, as they were mainly destined for salaries’ domiciliation. Credit cards came in second with a 21.6% while pre-paid (19.97%) and charge cards (7.7%) followed. Worth mentioning that resident pre-paid cards witnessed the highest yearly increase of 212% by September 2014. This might be on the back of people becoming more inclined to giving pre-paid cards as gifts as this product/service is developing. The progress in the cards’ retail market came hand in hand with the improvement in the number of ATMs that reached 1,686 by September 2014 compared to 1,497, over the same period last year. Beirut remained the most concentrated by ATMs grasping 39.08% of the total while Mount Lebanon took a share of 28.65%. North Lebanon, South Lebanon and Bekaa respectively grasped 9.25%, 7.29% and 6.58% of total, over the above mentioned period.
As for Point of Sales (POS) devices, the number of contracts signed with merchants slightly increased by 3.45% y-o-y to 36,778 during the first nine months of 2014, while the total number of machines (manual and electronic) also up ticked by a yearly 0.55% to 30,517.
Total Number of Payment Cards (In millions) by September
Source: BdL