According to VISA International's estimates, Russian banks issued 36.6 million VISA cards in January-March 2007. This general popularity of the system can be traced in individual success stories: SKB-Bank, for one, has issued over 50,000 new VISA cards since the beginning of the year, with the total number of cards issued by the bank approaching 350,000. People also tend to make more non-cash payments lately. VISA International reports the number of supermarket transactions where VISA card was involved rose to over 113 million, or by 75%, at the end of March 2007. This means every Russian citizen of working age has used his or her VISA card at least once or twice since the beginning of the year.

VISA cards are now accepted at more than 220,000 terminals all over Russia (including nearly 166,000 supermarkets and shops and over 36,000 ATMs). This still does not seem sufficient for a country as large as Russia, though, SKB-Bank’s Card Director Evgeniy Belichenko says.

'I feel we need to come up with additional ways of expanding our acquiring network within mom-and-pop stores and small businesses, since large chain stores are accepting VISA cards already. Besides, we need to make the server feedback and connection very dependable to make sure our card holders have no hard time paying for their shopping,’ Mr. Belichenko explains.

The Bank of Russia reports Moscow (including Moscow Region) and Saint Petersburg were the cities with the greatest number of card holders in Russia on April 1, 2007. All the other positions on the Top 5 list were taken by the regions of Ural Federal District: Sverdlovsk Region dwellers own 2.674 million bank cards, banks of Tyumen Region have issued 2.498 million cards since the beginning of 2007, those based in Chelyabinsk Region issued 2,011,304 cards in January-March 2007. The Republic of Ingooshetia was the region with the least impressive card issuance statistics: only 7,000 bank cards were issued in the first quarter of 2007, SKB-Bank’s press officer reports.