All main indicators of Ukrainian Payment Cards Market shown positive cashless payments trend in 2017.

The total number of card transactions increased by 24% in 2017, whereas ATMs and payment cards number decreased (hereinafter the information based on UPC customers data).

Card payments

Card payments become more and more popular every year. The number of purchases paid by cards has a 42% growth in 2017. The number of financial transactions per each active card reached 5,6 transactions a month.

The share of card payments in the total number of financial transactions obtained 63% and that was 7% higher than in 2016. The share of all consumer purchase volume covered almost 26%.

It is worth mentioning that the number of online purchases has gained 14% share of all purchases made by card. Their number has grown by 26% in 2017 versus 19% in 2016.

Contactless payments

We would like to point out that cardholders have already appreciated the advantages and simplicity of contactless payments. The number of contactless transactions was up 3 times and reached 19% of all card purchases at POS-terminals. This dynamic growth resulted in a 23% rise of contactless POS-terminals. Nowadays 96% of POS-terminals connected to UPC accept contactless cards.

Contactless payments is the method mostly used for frequent low-value purchases. An average amount of contactless transactions was 166 UAH in 2017 and it is 12% more than in 2016.

Ukrainians actively used contactless way to pay at petrol stations, restaurants, supermarkets, beauty stores and for public transport services (Tube). Although the numbers of contactless payments in public transport (Tube) had 5 times growth, they covered only 5% of all contactless transactions.

Card-to-card transfers

Ukrainians made more online money transfers this past year. The number of card-to-card transfers had rapid growth in 2017 and increased by 56%. An average amount of such transactions made 1800 UAH. In 2017, almost 2% of the total value of transactions and 1,4% of the total number of financial transactions were card-to-card transfers.

ATM

ATM-decreasing trends have been maintained and are likely to continue into the future. There was a 3% reduction in the number of UPC customer-banks' ATMs in 2017.

At the same time, the indicators of additional services usage at ATMs have grown. For example, the number of PIN-change transactions at ATM was 6 times higher than last year (due to active implementation of Paperless PIN Service at ATM). In addition, there was a 6% growth of deposit (cash-in) transactions and a 3% growth of cash withdrawal at ATM.

Consequently, analyzing the main figures of 2017 we see the upward trend at Ukrainian Payment Card Market. Contactless payments, online purchases, digital wallets and other advanced payment technologies enhance cashless development.