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The Bank of Thailand will try to persuade more consumers to use payment cards instead of cash under the central bank's payments "roadmap" for 2010. "Under the roadmap, the bank will encourage the use of electronic payments to reduce cash-management costs," a bank spokesperson tells CardLine Global. As part of the effort, the central bank intends to revise rules related to electronic transactions, though it offered no details. Thai banks issue some 27.9 million debit cards, 19.6 million ATM-only cards and 13.1 million credit cards, the spokesperson says. "However, most of these cards are not used for daily payments," the spokesperson says. "The national average for using these cards is three transactions per person per year." According to the roadmap, the central bank will electronic transactions to develop the payment card market further.
