Financial future by eyes of the Bank of Thailand

The Bank of Thailand ''BoT'' expects electronic payment services to gain high popularity with plastic cards set to play an active role in place of cash in the next 4-5 years. The supposition is based upon the fact that a group of service providers, including both commercial banks and non-bank institutions, are rivaling to provide a variety of new services to meet consumer needs.

Plastic cards are forecasted to become more widespread than cash payments and money transfers at counter services. According to the comparison made debit cards enjoy more demand than credit cards while ATM cards are declining in popularity.

The figures show that spending on credit cards made in 2007 had a 11.3% increase against 20.7% increase in the preceding year which is attributed to customers’ being more careful when spending their money.

As for debit cards 538.29 million transactions were made via them of which 79.6% were cash withdrawal operations.
The number of transaction made via ATM cards fell 9.7% to 571.3 million in 2007 from 632.7 million in 2006.