India's card industry on cusp of sustained growth

India's card industry on cusp of sustained growth
Tags: Card Readers, Self check-out systems
September 26, 2005

ePaynews: While India's banks are delaying the issue of chip-based cards, the number of credit cards in use is predicted to grow by 35 percent per year through 2010, up from about 15 million now. Just 7 million of India's 1.1 billion population has a credit card, and plastic transactions account for two to three percent of a retail industry with annual turnover of over $200 billion. India has about 175,000 POS terminals at present, a sizeable number of which would need adaptation for smart cards, although 53,000 of ICICI Bank's 55,000 terminals contain a built-in smart card reader.