Cards, cash and football: H1 payment cards statistics

In 2018 H1, foreigners paying for goods and services in Russia with bank cards spent over 144 billion rubles. For the most part (more than 89 billion rubles), these funds were spent during Q2 which is, in part, attributed to the purchasing activity of tourists visiting the FIFA World Cup 2018. For comparison, according to Bank of Russia statistics, in Q2 of the last year, operations across foreigners’ bank cards in Russia totalled cca. 52 billion rubles.

Russian citizens also actively used cards to pay for goods and services within the country in January—June 2018. These operations represented three quarters of all card transactions. The average purchase came to 863 ruble vs. 906 rubles a year before. This trend has maintained over the last few years and reflects both the expansion of the card acceptance network and the growing popularity of cards as a means of payment among households.

In total, during the reporting period, Russian banks issued 269 million of cards.