Anantapol Punpeng, executive vice president, said the bank targeted at least six million debit cards to be issued within three years and would also invest more in its call centre to penetrate the retail market.

Earlier, KTB's debit-card portfolio was managed by Krungthai Card (KTC), the country's largest credit-card issuer in which KTB is the major shareholder. After the contract expired, both parties made an agreement that KTC would focus on credit cards while debit cards would transfer to KTB.

The bank's active debit cards rose from 400,000 to 700,000 last month. It expects the figure to shape up to 1.5 million at the end of this year.

According to the Bank of Thailand's 2006 report released recently, debit cards rose 26 per cent from 11 million cards in 2005 to 14 million cards last year.

ATM cards rose 7 per cent from 28.8 million cards in 2005 to 30.9 million cards last year. Credit cards rose 9.5 per cent from 10 million cards in 2005 to 10.9 million cards last year, of which 5.6 million were issued by commercial banks.

In 2006, ATM cards accounted for 55 per cent of plastic cards issued, dropping from 58 per cent a year earlier. Debit cards accounted for 25 per cent, up from 22 per cent, and the proportion of credit cards stayed at 20 per cent.