UAE residents have 2 pre-paid cards: How many do you have?
The UAE and the entire region is witnessing a surge in the number of pre-paid cards and their usage, an industry forum heard yesterday.
Among the host of data shared at the Prepaid Summit: Middle East 2015 was details about card penetration in the region.
The highest number of pre-paid cards is held by residents of Iran (2.4), followed by the UAE (2), South Africa (1.3), Kuwait (1.3), Oman (1), Bahrain (0.8) and Saudi Arabia (0.7). Lebanon has the ninth-highest level of 0.4 cards per person.
In terms of frequency of cards usage, Saudi Arabia leads with 95.3 transactions per card, Kuwait with 47.4, followed by Iran (46.5), the UAE (43.1), Nigeria (38.2), and Lebanon (31.9).
According to electronic payments firm Visa, during the 2014 holy month, cardholders spent Dh14.62 billion ($3.98 billion) across all of its products – credit, debit and prepaid.