Retail Bank Research’s latest cards research, Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2021*, revealed that:

• debit cards dominate:
  • 
• UnionPay is now the largest scheme in terms of value of payments with a 37% share of the $22 trn spend world-wide in 2015. With MasterCard and Visa they take 87%:
  • 
• total volume of card payments increased by 15% in 2015 to 270 bn (only 8% in 2014)
• domestic cards continue to be used with 11% of cards and 3% of expenditure. They have a bright future predicted by RBR, e.g:
  • RuPay card in India has taken 35% of market in four years and already has 2% of global market
  • strong growth is expected from Elo card in Brazil, MiR card in Russian and TROY card in Turkey both domestically and also internationally. 

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* ‘Global Cards Data and Forecasts’, Published: July 2016. Countries covered: 66 countries around the world

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CTMfile take: The emergence of the UnionPay shows the spending power of the Chinese consumers. In many countries, accepting payment cards at the point of sale is no longer a matter of just taking MasterCard and Visa. Should you also accept UnionPay and the major domestic cards?