BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, March 10. There were 5.024 million bank payment cards in circulation in Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek as of December 31, 2024.
Data obtained by Trend from the National Bank of Kyrgyzstan shows that Bishkek accounted for 54.7 percent of the total number of cards in Kyrgyzstan.
The distribution by payment systems is as follows:
Visa: 3.896 million cards
MasterCard: 45,618 cards
Zolotaya Korona: 23,795 cards
National payment system Elkard: 1,056 million cards
UnionPay International : 1,916 cards
As many as 9,184 million payment cards were in circulation in Kyrgyzstan as of December 31, 2024, marking a 33.3 percent increase compared to the same period last year. The national system Elcard accounted for 3,651 million cards, or 39.8 percent of the total.
International payment systems contributed 5,533 million cards, or 60.2 percent of the total. The majority of these were issued under the Visa system, which accounted for 5,373 million cards, or 58.5 percent of the total. Mastercard followed with 69,825 cards (0.8 percent), while Russia's Zolotaya Korona system issued 87,291 cards (1 percent), and Union Pay International had just 3,053 cards (0.03 percent).
There were 21 commercial banks and 304 branches of commercial banks operating in Kyrgyzstan as of December 31, 2024. Five of these commercial banks provided services in accordance with Islamic principles of banking and finance, both in national and/or foreign currencies.