Summer season is over and now it is time to review figures to see where and how often Ukrainians have used their payment cards abroad this summer. (hereinafter the information is based on UPC customers data).

Cards Payments

Comparing the summer of 2017 to 2018, we can see an upward trend – the total number of card payments abroad increased by 49%.

The most popular country to do card payments in was Poland, as in the previous year. During the period from 01.06.2018 to 31.08.2018 84 354 purchases were made, which was more than 11% of the total purchases paid for by cards abroad. However Poland took only the ninth place by the volume of transactions. The average amount of payment was 638 UAH.

Also Ukrainians actively used their cards in Italy, Spain and the UK, where the share of total purchases paid for by cards abroad was 7%. Russia also took place in TOP 5 foreign countries by the number of Ukrainian cards transactions and covered 5%.

It is worth mentioning, that the figures of card transactions volume were different from card transactions number this summer. Italy remains the absolute leader by the volume of card purchases. The share of card transactions in Italy (by transaction volume) was more than 15% with the average bill of 4 169 UAH.

The second place in card transactions volume was taken by France with a 9% share and an average amount of payments was 3 372 UAH. Spain and Germany ranked third TOP foreign countries by transaction volumes with an 8% share. The average amount of payments was 2 126 UAH and 2 817 UAH. The UK took the fifth place in this TOP 5 with a 6% share of transaction volume and an average bill was 1 797 UAH.

Cardholders actively used their cards to pay at supermarkets, restaurants, petrol stations, clothing stores and hotels.

ATM transactions

For years, during foreign trips Ukrainian tourists primarily have used their cards for payments and rarely for cash withdrawal at ATM. This summer cash withdrawal transactions were 16 times less than card payments.
As a year before, Russia had the highest number of ATM transactions. From 06/01/2017 to 08/31/2017 in this country 8 099 transactions were made. This is more than 17% from the total number of all ATM transactions made abroad.

Also, Ukrainians made a lot of cash withdrawal transactions in the USA - 11%, Poland - 10%, Germany - 7% and Turkey - 5%.

However, in the terms of transaction volumes, the first place was occupied by the USA, where the share of cash withdrawal transactions was 13% of the total volume of ATM transactions made abroad. And the country with the highest average cash withdrawal amount from ATM was Germany. In this country the average amount was 9 993 UAH.