It was meant to be.

With the credits drying up and with people becoming more frugal in their spending, debit transactions are definitely on the rise. According to the data from Bank of International Settlements, the volume of the debit transactions (including delayed debit transactions) is increasing at a rapid pace as shown in the chart below:

Debit transaction volume - Worldwide (top 23 countries)

In the US, Visa mainly uses its Interlink network while Mastercard uses Maestro network and Discover uses its PULSE network to process the debit related transactions.

Now, let us see how much of these debit transactions are being handled by Visa, Mastercard and Discover…

Visa, Mastercard and Discover share of the debit transaction volumes

The sources of the data are Bank of International Settlements Statistics and the annual reports of the respective companies.

As you can see, there is still a lot of room for growth for these companies. Because of the Durbin Amendment rules, the merchants have to be given a choice of at least 2 debit networks. Some of the other networks such as STAR will be benefited by this..

In the next few days, let us examine in detail about the growth potential of the debit transactions and what each of the major payment networks are doing to grow…