UnionPay, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB and Discover/Diners Club—the global network cards—are projected to generate 891.20 billion transactions in 2027, an increase of 42.3% over 2022. This is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.3% per year.
In business since 1998, Equinix operates 240 data centers worldwide in more than 70 metropolitan areas in 32 countries. It provides secure, low-latency network support services to stock markets, payment card networks, central banks, national payment systems, Tier 1 banks and other clients.
Over the last decade, dozens of buy now, pay later (BNPL) specialists worldwide have focused on signing merchants as distribution channels for their consumer lending businesses. Growth has been explosive, and BNPL fintechs attracted eager investors.
There are over 90 general purpose card brands worldwide that operate only in their native country. These cards can be debit or credit. Collectively, they generated $516.05 billion in purchase volume in 2021.
The largest global networks of merchant acceptance locations belonged to Visa and Mastercard at the end of the third quarter of 2022. Both can firmly identify more than 80 million in-store and online outlets and micromerchants that use smartphones or handheld tablets to accept card payments.
Spending for goods and services—purchase volume—initiated by the 150 largest issuers of debit cards combined reached $11.164 trillion in 2021, an increase of 12.9% over 2020.
Spending for goods and services—purchase volume—initiated by credit cards issued by the 150 largest portfolios worldwide reached $12.695 trillion in 2021. This was up 9.4% from $11.605 trillion in 2020.
Shipments of payment cards in 2021 by manufacturer were published in issue 1229. The table on the next page shows shipments by manufacturer of SIM cards, transportation/ticketing cards, private label prepaid cards, phone cards and nonpayment cards such as those for identification, access control, membership/loyalty, promotions, healthcare, driver’s licenses, etc.
From January 1 to June 30, 2022, Visa, UnionPay, Mastercard, JCB, Diners Club/Discover and American Express brand credit, debit and prepaid cards collectively generated 286.20 billion purchase transactions for goods and services worldwide. This was up 10.2% from the same period in 2021.
PIN pads, dongle-type card readers, other types of card readers, electronic cash registers (ECR) and devices that scan QR codes but do not accept cards were not covered in issue 1228, which featured shipments of POS terminals.
