OREANDA-NEWS. August 06, 2009. The International Bank of Azerbaijan, the only state-owned bank in the country, continues to retain the leading positions at the country's market of plastic cards, reported the press-centre of IBA.

As the Bank reports, at the end of the first half of 2009, IBA maintained 1,589,333 active plastic cards. The Bank installed 587 automatic teller machines and 2,692 POS-terminals.

At the year-end of 2008, IBA maintained 1,516,914 active plastic cards. The Bank installed 585 automatic teller machines and 2,684 POS-terminals, and the IBA's market share accounted to 41.8% of the total volume of cards issued by the country's banks, 38.6% of the total number of automatic teller machines, and 33% of the total number of POS-terminals.

According to the National Bank of Azerbaijan, as of January 1st, 2009, the number of active plastic cards issued by the country's banks totaled 3,626 thousand, as compared to 3.35 million as of October 1st and 2.787 million cards at the beginning of 2008. By the year-end of 2007, the banks had issued only 1.542 million cards.

In 2008, 40.111 million operations were carried out with regard to the cards issued in the country, including 38.448 million operations with regard to debit cards and 1.663 million operations with regard to credit cards. The country's banks operated 1,515 automatic teller machines and 8,124 POS-terminals.

The International Bank of Azerbaijan was the first to begin issuing plastic cards in the country starting from 1997.