The Bank of Russia came up with a report on the Russian bank cards market’s trends and prospects. According to this report, Russian citizens are starting to use their cards more often in their daily life; as for the credit cards, most of the cardholders are between twenty-five and forty-four years old.

Last year, Russian cardholders performed a total of 1.6 billion card transactions (involving 6.5 trillion RUR) both within the country and abroad. These figures exceed the ones for 2006 by 36% and 47%, respectively.

The country’s banks had issued 103.5 million cards by January 1, 2008, which is 30% better than a year earlier. In fact, the ratio of one bank card per every Russian citizen is expected to be arrived at in just one or two years’ time.

Russian banks keep making a lot of efforts in the field of bank card development. SKB-Bank, for one, had issued over 472,000 cards by June 2, 2008 (compared with only 430,000 cards at the beginning of the year). SKB-Bank runs more than 250 ATMs throughout the entire country, including 80 machines in Yekaterinburg.

The report states that people have been using their cards to pay for goods and services since the year 2003, with the share of payment transactions in the total amount of bank card operations rising from 14% in 2003 to 21% in 2007. The Central Bank believes this growth has to do with the fact that more and more people use their cards to pay their housing, Internet connection, cable television, and mobile phone bills.