Russian banks have issued almost 260 million payment cards in the first half of 2017, which is four percent more, as compared to the same period of last year.

      At the same time, if 133.5 million cards were active on July 1, 2016, then a year later this number reached already 144 million, as the report notes; a total of 10.9 billion transactions totaling 27.6 trillion roubles have been performed via the cards in January-June.

      The majority of them concerned payments for goods and services - more than eight billion transactions for 7.7 billion roubles.