Plastic Money

With growing number of financial institutions, particularly the commercial banks, use of paper money is being gradually replaced by plastic money. They come in the form of credit cards and debits cards. The passion for plastic money is on rise among the urban consumers, as they find it convenient, secure and easy to use. Although the use of plastic money dates back to more than a decade in Nepal, a geometric progression of its multi-purpose usage has been witnessed only in the last couple of years. As a result, today almost all financial institutions irrespective to even finance companies and development banks have opted for plastic cards rather than cheque book, which is costly comparatively. Going through the figures for the past three years, number of card users has grown exponentially and today it is estimated around 320,000. There are about 120 ATM’s and 2000 plus point of sales (PoS) terminals across the country. Smart Choice Technologies (SCT), which introduced first of its kind of initiative in Nepal creating an integrated shared services network (SCT-Network) for ATM’s and PoS terminals, managed through a national switch. The SCT-Network is fully integrated network supporting multiple device types and card acquiring standards. The beauty of plastic money is its wider acceptance, security, easy to carry and anytime usage for the customers while it has helped the banks to reduce their cost of operation. Although at present card market is mainly limited to Kathmandu valley and other relatively bigger cities and tourist locations only.