Glossary of Terms
These quick card facts are garnared from a variety of
expert industry sources, the statistics will be updated periodically
as new industry information becomes available.
1. GLOBAL: Credit and Debit
Financial Cards in Circulation (C.I.C.) 2005
Brand |
Credit* |
% |
Debit* |
% |
TOTAL* |
Visa |
797.2 |
50.5 |
781.3 |
49.5 |
1578.5 |
MC |
630.9 |
84.2 |
118.3 |
15.8 |
749.2 |
TOTAL |
1428.1 |
61.5 |
899.6 |
38.5 |
2327.7 |
*Numbers in Millions
2. GLOBAL: Credit versus Debit
Visa / MC Cards in Circulation 2005
|
Global |
USA |
Canada |
Credit |
61.5% |
72.3% |
63.9% |
Debit |
38.5% |
27.7% |
36.1% |
|
100.0% |
100.0% |
100.0% |
3. CANADA: Credit and Debit
Financial Cards in Circulation (C.I.C.) 2005
Brand |
No. of Cards* |
% |
Visa |
26.8 |
27.7 |
MC |
31.3 |
32.3 |
Interac |
34.9 |
36.1 |
Amex |
3.8 |
3.9 |
TOTAL |
96.8 |
100.0 |
|
No. of Cards* |
% |
Credit |
61.9 |
63.9 |
Debit |
34.9 |
36.1 |
TOTAL |
96.8 |
100.0 |
* Numbers in Millions
5% Growth from 2004 to 2005
4. CANADA: Top 10 Credit Card Issuers 2005
Issuer |
C.I.C. |
Bank of Montreal (BOM) |
9.9 |
Royal Bank (RBC) |
7.0 |
MBNA |
6.5 |
TD Canada Trust |
6.4 |
CIBC |
6.3 |
Canadian Tire |
5.3 |
Bank of Nova Scotia |
3.8 |
Capital One |
2.9 |
Desjardins |
2.7 |
National Bank of Canada |
2.2 |
TOTAL |
53.0 |
Top 10 Represent 91% of Credit Cards in Circulation
5. MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA: Credit and Debit
Financial Cards in Circulation (C.I.C.) 2005
Brand |
No. of Cards* |
% |
Visa |
35.1 |
76.8 |
MC |
9.6 |
21.0 |
Amex |
0.7 |
1.5 |
Diners |
0.3 |
0.7 |
TOTAL |
45.7 |
100.0 |
* Numbers in Millions
25.4% Growth from 2004 to 2005
6. MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA: Top 10 Visa / MC Issuers 2005
Issuer |
Country |
C.I.C.* |
Absa Bank |
South Africa |
7.9 |
Al Rahji Bank |
Saudi Arabia |
2.7 |
Standard Bank |
South Africa |
2.0 |
Nedbank Group |
South Africa |
1.7 |
First National Bank |
South Africa |
1.7 |
Bank Hapoalim / Isracard |
Israel |
1.5 |
Bank Leumi |
Israel |
1.2 |
Israel Credit Cards |
Israel |
1.0 |
Societe Interbank |
Morocco |
0.9 |
National Bank Kuwait |
Kuwait |
0.7 |
TOTAL |
|
22.3 |
*Numbers in Millions
Top 10 Represent 48.8% of VISA / MC in Circulation
7. ASIA / PACIFIC: Credit and Debit
Financial Cards in Circulation (C.I.C.) 2005
Brand |
No. of Cards* |
% |
Visa |
455.5 |
67.3 |
MC |
155.0 |
22.9 |
JCB |
55.9 |
8.2 |
Amex |
8.4 |
1.2 |
Diners |
2.5 |
0.4 |
TOTAL |
677.3 |
100.0 |
*Numbers in Millions
14.3% Growth from 2004 to 2005
8. ASIA / PACIFIC: Top 10 Visa / MC Issuers 2005
Issuer |
Country |
C.I.C.* |
I&CB Bank |
China |
34.1 |
UFJ Nicos |
Japan |
19.5 |
Credit Saison |
Japan |
16.7 |
Sumitomo Mitsui |
Japan |
14.1 |
LG Card |
South Korea |
13.4 |
UC Card |
Japan |
12.8 |
BC Card |
South Korea |
11.2 |
DC Card |
Japan |
11.0 |
Orient Corporation |
Japan |
8.6 |
Bangkok Bank |
Thailand |
8.0 |
TOTAL |
|
149.4 |
*Numbers in Millions
Top 10 Represent 24.5% of Visa / MC in Circulation
9. USA: Credit and Debit
Financial Cards in Circulation (C.I.C.) 2005
Brand |
No. of Cards* |
% |
Visa |
510.9 |
53.0 |
MC |
351.6 |
36.5 |
Amex |
43.0 |
4.5 |
Discover |
58.1 |
6.0 |
TOTAL |
963.5 |
100.0 |
*Numbers in Millions
8.3% Growth from 2004 to 2005
|
No. of Cards |
% |
Credit |
696.2 |
72.3 |
Debit |
267.3 |
27.7 |
TOTAL |
963.5 |
100.0 |
10. USA: Top 10 Visa / MC Issuers 2005
Issuer |
Credit* |
Debit* |
Total* |
Bank of America |
122.4 |
27.9 |
150.3 |
Citigroup |
108.8 |
4.2 |
113.0 |
JP Morgan Chase |
91.2 |
9.2 |
100.4 |
Capital One |
56.9 |
0.9 |
57.8 |
HSBC |
36.7 |
1.0 |
17.7 |
Wells Fargo |
12.1 |
15.2 |
27.3 |
Washington Mutual |
12.0 |
9.6 |
21.6 |
Target |
16.0 |
– |
16.0 |
US Bank |
8.5 |
– |
8.5 |
Wachovia |
– |
7.8 |
7.8 |
TOTAL |
464.6 |
75.8 |
540.4 |
*Numbers in Millions
Top 10 Represent 63% of Visa / MC in Circulation
11. EUROPE: Credit and Debit
Financial Cards in Circulation (C.I.C.) 2005
Brand |
No. of Cards* |
% |
Visa |
336.6 |
70.6 |
MC |
127.7 |
26.8 |
Amex |
10.4 |
2.2 |
Diner |
2.3 |
0.4 |
TOTAL |
477.1 |
100.0 |
*Numbers in Millions
14.7% Growth from 2004 to 2005
12. Europe: Top 10 Visa / MC Issuers 2005
Issuer |
Country |
C.I.C.* |
Barclays Bank |
UK |
24.5 |
RBS / NatWest |
UK |
18.4 |
Credit Agricole |
France |
13.3 |
Turkiye is Bankasi |
Turkey |
9.2 |
HSBC |
UK |
9.1 |
HBOS |
UK |
8.6 |
T. Garanti Bankasi |
Turkey |
7.7 |
La Caixa |
Spain |
7.6 |
Carta Si |
Italy |
7.4 |
MBNA |
UK |
7.0 |
TOTAL |
|
112.8 |
*Numbers in Millions
Top 10 Represent 62% of Visa / MC in Circulation
13. US Payment Information:
- Average consumer makes 58 payment choices each month
- Cash and check usage declining
o 2001: 57%
o 2003: 49%
o 2005: 45%
- Debit card purchases – in store
o 2000: 21%
o 2005: 33%
- Gift card usage at least once per month
o 2003: 12%
o 2005: 32%
14. USA: Contactless Cards
- More than 11 million contactless payment cards in circulation
- Largest applications include convenience retail purchases
15. North America: Smart Cards
- Microcontroller shipments will top 135 million units in 2005 with 27.7% CAGR projected through 2010
- Largest applications ranked as follows:
o SIM Mobile Telecom
o Pay TV
o Payment / Loyalty
o Government ID
o Access Control
16. Latin America: Smart Cards
- Microcontroller shipments at 136.4 million units in 2005 with 59.1% CAGR
- Largest application is GSM Mobile Telecom, followed by Payment / Loyalty
17. Latin America: Visa Chip Cards
- Microprocessor smart cards (Visa)
o 2000: 1.0 million
o 2004: 4.1 million
o 2005: 5.1 million
- Brazil and Mexico are leaders
18. Latin America: Smart Card Growth
- Microprocessor smart cards growth at 26%
- 100% of payment terminals are chip ready
- Cards in Circulation to exceed 100 million in 2006
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ABS…Acrylonitrile
butadiene styrene, plastic material formed through injection molding,
used for some smart cards.
Access Control Card…Magnetic or chip cards
with or without photo used to enter restricted areas eg. ID badges.
Blank Cards…Cards with no printing usually
used in imagining machines
Chip…A piece of silicon etched with an electronic
circuit.
Coercivity…A measure of the strength of a magnetic
field. Fields are expressed as low or high by the terms LoCo and HiCo.
Combi-card…Holding both contact and contactless
technology on one card.
Contact…A point of electrical connection between
a smart card and its external interface device.
Contact Card…Any card where information is
transferred to a reader via a series of contact points located on the
card.
Contactless Card…Smart card which
transfers data using radio frequency technology via a transmitter and
receiver.
Degaussing…Magnetic
stripe data erasure.
Digitizing…Conversion of non-textual data to
digital form.
EMV…A standard or specification endorsed by
Mastercard or Visa.
Electronic Purse…Smart card stored value program.
Embossing… Characters in relief on the front
surface of a card.
Encoding…Recording electronic information on
to a magnetic stripe.
Encryption…Transferring information based on
a key to make it intelligible to unauthorized parties.
Financial Hologram Card…Financial cards using
a hologram, 30 mil thickness, ISO cards, Mastercards/Visa and others.
Financial Other…Usually Debit, Check, Charge
or ATM cards not using a hologram.
GSM…Global System for Mobile Communication,
a widely used digital mobile phone standard.
Gift Card…A retail prepaid card usually initiated
at cash or checkout.
Hologram…A flat optical image which looks three-dimensional
to the naked eye.
Holographic foil…the
foil used to carry embossed holographic images.
Initialization…Programming a smart card chip
with data that is the same for a batch of cards.
ID Card…Card which identifies both the bearer
and the issuer. All financial transaction cards are ID cards.
ISO…International Standards Organization, central
body for formation and dissemination of industry standards for all national
standards bodies.
Issuer…An individual or organization that issues
identification cards to individual or corporate cardholders.
Lithography or Offset Printing…Most common
process for plastic card printing based on the concept that oil and water
are not compatible. The ink represents the oil and the alkaline fountain
solution represents the water. These are the two main components which
must interact during the printing process, allowing the ink to adhere
to the image area of a printing plate while the fountain solution repels
the ink from the non-image area.
Lamination…Using
plates on a press to fuse the various layers of a plastic card together.
Loyalty Card…Usually a retail frequent user
card offering promotional benefits.
Magnetic Stripe…The strip of magnetic recording
material on an ID card.
Membership Card…Usually a club member card
for ID purpose.
Multi-application Card…Smart card that can
handle a variety of applications.
Non-magnetic Card…Cards without a magnetic
stripe eg. ID cards.
Oersted…The unit of magnetic coercive force
used to define difficult of erasure of magnetic material.
Off-line…A transaction via paper or reader
not connected to a central system.
On-line…A transaction on a terminal permanently
connected to a network that is on-line to the card account.
Optical Card…Card with information recorded
on an optical memory stripe, similar to compact disks.
Other Secure Card…Usually Retail , Oil/Gas,
Telecom, Transit, Pay TV cards.
Pay TV Card…Usually a chip card subscribing
to a television service eg. satellite TV.
Personalization…Printing, encoding and programming
a card with data specific to an individual cardholder.
Prepaid Card…A
card paid for at point of sale permitting the holder to buy goods and
services up to the prepaid value.
Promotional Card…A card offering special benefits
to users eg, discount card.
Proximity Card…A contactless card whose presence
and data can be sensed by an interface device not in physical contact
with the card.
PVC…Polyvinyl chloride, the most widely used
plastic material for ID cards.
Radio Frequency Card (RFID)…A proximity card
in which the coupling between the card and the interface device is by
radio.
Secure Card…Cards with an intrinsic value.
eg. financial, other secure etc.
Screen Printing…Method in which ink is forced
through a design-bearing screen made of silk or other material onto the
substrate being printed.
Signature Panel…The area of an ID card where
the cardholder enters a signature.
SIM…Subscriber Identification Module: the smart
card necessary for the operation of GSM phones.
Skimming…Copying the magnetic stripe encoding
from one card to another.
Smart Card…(aka Chip Card, IC Card)… A
plastic credit card sized card that contains one or more semiconductor
chips. In the capability category, there are three types:
Memory Card…smart card that stores and retrieves
serial "streams" of data that are sent to or received from the
semiconductor chip.
Protected Memory Card…smart card that requires
a secret code or PIN number to be entered before the data can be sent
to or received from the semiconductor chip.
Microprocessor Card…contains a microprocessor
chip with a microcode that defines a command structure, a data file structure
and a security structure in the card.
SET…Secure
Electronic Transaction, a MasterCard/Visa backed standard to allow safe
Internet trading via encryption certification of all parties involved
in a transaction.
Stored Value Card (aka cash card, electronic purse,
prepaid card)…A financial card that is loaded with a certain
amount of money with each purchase amount deducted from the card.
Substrate…Material upon which a plastic card
is printed.
Transit Card…Magnetic or chip card used for
transportation services eg. subway card.
Telecom Card…Magnetic or chip card used for
telephone services eg. GSM card, prepaid card.
Traditional Card…A magnetic or non magnetic
card not using chip card technology.
UV Printing…UV printing is used to print on
plastic, foil, and specialty substrates. UV light is used to dry specially
formulated inks that are printed on non-porous materials. In converntional
printing, ink dries as it is absorbed into paper. Because plastic is not
absorbent, the ink must be dried on the top surface using UV light.
Weigand Wire…Magnetic media embedded in cards
for access control applications.