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Research: ABI forecasts steep rise in smart card shipments through 2017

September 19, 2012

The smart card market seems set for continued dramatic growth with migrations to EMV in the United States and Latin America accompanied by a shift in China to a new standard mandated by the People's Bank of China. Given the demand, London-based research firm ABI forecasts total shipments of 2.8 billion smart payment card units in 2017, more than an eight-fold increase from 330 million in 2011.

Opportunities within the smart payment cards market remain vast and not limited to a particular region, ABI found in its report, "Payment and Banking Cards & Contactless Technologies." The U.S now looks certain to migrate, following mandates in liability shift from Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Discover in support of the adoption of EMV. To date, approximately 19 financial institutions in the U.S. have committed to EMV migration, ABI found

"In addition to the U.S., China remains a clear emerging opportunity within the smart payments card market," said ABI Research Analyst Phil Sealy. "It is currently in the process of migrating to its PBOC 2.0 standard as well as issuing up to 800 million multi-application cards combining payment and social security functionality, using dual interface technology. China also has one of the fastest growing banking populations worldwide putting more emphasis on the importance of the region." ABI Research forecasts that China will account for 25 percent of all smart payment card shipments in 2017.

"Together Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina account for the largest proportion of payment cards within the Latin American region," said ABI Practice Director John Devlin. "With migration to EMV and a growing banking population, combined shipments are forecast to increase from 180 million in 2011 to 315 million in 2017. Increased activity in the region this year has resulted in other surrounding countries following suit and adopting EMV. The regional business pipeline looks good with Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Chile all beginning migration in 2012."

Forecasted payment card data in the ABI research is split into smart and mag-stripe applications. Further granularity is supplied for smart cards, with data broken down by product and technology type (ATM only, credit card, debit card, prepaid, contact, pure contactless, and dual interface). POS terminal data is presented for both contact and contactless applications.

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