The total number of card transactions increased by 20% in 2018 with more than 530 mln. transactions, whereas the number of ATMs decreased (hereinafter the information based on UPC customers data).

Card payments

The number of purchases paid by cards had a 32% growth in 2017. The number of financial transactions per each active card reached 6.8 transactions a month.

The share of card payments in the total number of financial transactions was 4% higher than in 2017 and covered 65%. The share of all consumer purchase volume obtained almost 28%.

It is worth mentioning that the number of online purchases has gained 14% share of all purchases made with cards. Their number increased by 29% in 2018 in contrast to 26% in 2017.

Contactless payments

More cardholders take advantage of contactless payments. The number of such transactions doubled and reached 29% of all card payments at POS-terminals. Nowadays 86% of POS-terminals connected to UPC accept contactless cards.

It should be noted that contactless payment is more commonly used for low-cost purchases. An average amount of contactless transactions was 205 UAH in 2018.

Ukrainians frequently used PayWave and PayPass technologies 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) tripled, they covered only 6% of all contactless transactions.

Online card-to-card transfers

Online money transfers doubled over the last 12 months (nearly a 93% growth). An average amount of such transactions made was 1 900 UAH. The recent years have been characterized, among other things, by new developments in the field of money transfers, including banks' mobile applications. In 2018, 2.1% of the total number of financial transactions and 3% of the total value of transactions were card-to-card transfers.

ATM

ATM-decreasing trend has been ongoing for several years now. The number of UPC customer-banks' ATMs decreased by 4% in 2018. While the indicators of additional services usage at ATMs have grown. For example, the number of deposit (cash-in) transactions had a 7% growth. The cash withdrawal transactions (cash-out) continue to be unabated. Their number increased by 9%.

According to the indicators of 2018, we can conclude that the Ukrainian Payment Cards Market continues its extension.

In the last few years there has been a significant development of the cashless infrastructure. More and more financial services can be received in banks' mobile applications, as well as in Internet banking. These updates and innovations in the payment card market minimize the number of steps a cardholder needs to take and to make shopping even easier and faster.