Smart Payment Card Market Showing Signs of Life

June 6, 2016         By: Mike Dautner

As it turns out, Smart payment card unit shipments are slated to grow from an approximate 2.5 billion in 2015 to nearly 3.4 billion in 2020, regardless of the increase in mobile and wearable payment products.

The U.S. and China are expected to be among the key markets on the global scale to drive growth of Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) card shipments over the next five years.

In the U.S. alone, shipments of smart payment and banking cards are expected to grow significantly, from 223.2 million in 2014 to 644.2 million in 2015. Growth for EMV cards will come from tier-1 banks; however, growth from tier-2 and tier-3 banks is projected to ramp up too.

Although, shipments of smart payment and baking cards to the U.S. are projected to decline to 624.7 million. This is due to large issuers and processors overstocked in 2015. This overhaul of inventory is expected to have a negative impact on card demand and sales growth in 2016. SMB issuers have required a larger learning curve, thus slowing the transition to chip-based cards.

On the other side of the coin, China is more accelerated in regard to EMV card migration. The number of Chinese smart payment cards shipped in 2015 was almost 600 million. To clarify, only “pure” payment cards were taken into account for this statistic. The Chinese social security card, Chinese transport card, and Chinese health with a payment function and co-branded cards are not included.

The first years of Chinese EMV migration, volume growth was mainly backed by tier-1 banks, but after this period tier-2 and tier-3 got into the mix. The next five years or so will show a growth profile in China at a fairly slow rate. This is a reflection of the fact that the Chinese market will shift from an EMV migration to a replacement market.