Card payments are gaining momentum

Card transactions carried out by Russian citizens to pay for goods and services made up approximately 80% of all retail card transactions in 2016. According to Bank of Russia statistics, this was a five-year high.

“We have been witnessing a marked increase in card-based cashless operations being carried out by Russian citizens over the last few years. They are growing at an annual rate of 6-8 pp. This is a very good indicator,” notes Olga Skorobogatova, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia. “More and more Russians are finding it convenient and simple to use bank cards to pay for goods and services and make payments. Bank cards are increasingly being used as a payment instrument. We anticipate that this trend will continue thanks to advancements in payment technologies, including NFC-based payments.”

The popularity of cards as a cashless payment instrument is evidenced by the consistently rapid growth of card-based cashless operations, outpacing growth indicators for other payment instruments. Back in 2009, for every 100 payments made by legal entities and individuals, only 21 were bank card payments. In comparison, 2016 saw a 3.4-fold increase in this indicator (rising to 71 payments). The share of bank card payments for goods and services grew from 3.5% in 2009 to 30.5% in 2016 across the total volume of retail trade, other miscellaneous paid services, and public catering.

The overall number of cards issued by Russian banks grew by 4.5% to 254.8 million in 2016, or 1.7 cards per capita. Over 2016, these cards were used to effect 17.9 transactions worth 51.2 trillion rubles both inside and outside Russia (an increase on 2015 by 36.2 and 23.4% respectively). On average, in 2016 120 transactions worth 349.7 thousand rubles were carried out per citizen (in 2015, 90 transactions worth 283.8 thousand rubles).

At end-2016, 439 out of 623 credit institutions were issuing or acquiring payment cards. The network of their card handling devices comprised approximately 201 thousand ATMs and 2 million electronic terminals, of which 1.8 million were POS terminals.