The six card schemes are Visa, UnionPay, MasterCard, JCB, Diners Club/Discover and American Express, vanguardngr.com reports. The volume of purchase transactions of all commercial and consumer credit, debit, and prepaid cards via the six cards rose by 16.1% and the value of transactions rose by 18% (USD 3.110 trillion), according to Global Card report 2015, published by The Nilson Report, a trade newsletter covering the card and mobile payment industries.
Visa Inc. and Visa Europe accounted for 55.52% of all purchase transactions worldwide. Debit cards with Visa accounted for the most purchase transactions (35.50%), followed by Visa credit cards (20.02%), MasterCard credit cards (13.14%), MasterCard debit cards (13.13%), UnionPay credit cards (6.79%), UnionPay debit cards (6.00%), American Express cards (3.21%), JCB cards (1.23%) and Diners Club/Discover cards (0.98%).
In 2015, UnionPay credit and debit card purchase transactions at merchants grew by 47.0%. Its year-over-year growth of 9.28 billion transactions topped the 8.09 billion increase for MasterCard but trailed an increase of 13.16 billion for Visa.
Debit and prepaid cards accounted for 54.63% of purchase transactions, up from 54.05% in 2014. Visa purchase transactions were 63.95% debit, up from 63.71. MasterCard purchase transactions were 49.98% debit, up from 47.86%. UnionPay purchase transactions were 46.90% debit, up from 46.00%.
Credit, debit, and prepaid cards in circulation totaled 10.25 billion at the end of 2015, up 8.2% over year-end 2014. UnionPay accounted for 53.07% of global brand cards in circulation, up from 52.09%, followed by Visa (28.95%), down from 30.23%, MasterCard (15.35%), up from 14.96%, American Express (1.15%), down from 1.18%, JCB (0.91%), down from 0.93%, and Diners Club/Discover (0.56%), down from 0.60%. Of the total cards in circulation, 75.94% were debit, up from 74.61%. Debit cards in circulation grew by 716.3 million compared to a 61.4 million increase for credit cards.
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