Residents of Russia use bank cards more often now

In 2015 the residents of Russia used payment cards to pay for goods and services for a total of - 9 trillion and made over 9 billion transactions. A year ago these figures were - 7.1 trillion and 6.4 billion transactions respectively.

Contribution of such payments to the aggregate turnover of retail trade, public catering and paid services exceeded 22%.

According to the statistical data, last year the Russians used cards more than 12 billion times, and the card turnover was approximately - 33 trillion. Cash withdrawals — almost - 24 trillion (3.3 billion transactions) — account for a major part of these funds.

'Despite the fact that the main amount of card-related funds traditionally comes from cash withdrawals, in the past few years we observe a steady trend — our compatriots increasingly use cards as a means of payment for goods and services.  Notably, both the number of such transactions and their aggregate turnover are on the rise', Alla Bakina, Director of the Bank of Russia National Payment System Department, says.

Overall, the Russian credit institutions had issued roughly 244 million cards by the end of 2015, a 7% increase on the previous year’s figure. Settlement cards (debit cards) represent 88% of this number, while the remaining 12% belong to credit cards.

As many as 530 out of 733 credit institutions were issuing and/or acquiring payment cards as of the end of 2015. They hold approximately 207,000 ATMs and 1.7 million electronic terminals for card transactions with 1.5 million POS terminals located at trade and service companies.