HOUSTON — A survey of debit card issuers sponsored by PULSE suggests that further penetration by debit cards where cardholders validate their transactions with a signature may be harder to get.

The EFT association, which is owned by Discover Financial Services, commissioned the study that the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman conducted in February 2008. The study included 62 bank and credit union debit card issuers that collectively issue just over 74 million cards. Overall, 15,900 financial institutions have issued just over 263 million debit cards, according to a report of the survey results.

The survey found that average penetration among all debit card issuers had only risen 1%, from 72% to 73% over last year. The percentage of cards activated did slightly better, moving from 56% last year to 59% this year. The survey also found that CUs have the lowest percentage of their overall debit card portfolio in cards for which cardholders can use their signatures to validate transactions. These signature based transaction generally bring financial institutions more interchange than transactions which cardholders validate with a personal identification number.