The 2012-13 European Payment Cards Yearbook is out and it reveals that European card payments continued to grow in the continent, growing 10% in 2011.
The yearbook declares that, “the countries of Europe are generally mature payments markets, with cards issued and acceptance networks at or near saturation point in many cases. While this is less true of more recent EU-acceding countries like Bulgaria and Romania, investment by western banking groups and ongoing economic integration at EU level make it likely that the maturity of their payments will converge over time towards those of the more developed markets.”
In 2011, this translated into 41.99 billion card payments across the 33 countries, a growth rate of 9.1%. The use of cards for withdrawals at ATMs also showed an increase – showing that cash is not yet dead in Europe.
“Growth in debit card payments is getting stronger and stronger across Europe, while credit cards are losing ground. The use of cash also continues to grow at a more than healthy pace,” said Horst Förster, the author of the European Payment Cards Yearbook 2012-13, speaking to Finextra.
He continued, “the total growth in ATMs and cash transactions by number and by value indicates that the battle against cash is making much slower progress than intended. This bodes well for opportunities in prepaid, contactless and other online and mobile forms of electronic payment.”
However, not all markets are progressin the same way, with Turkey and the UK driving the issuing market in Europe. France, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Spain actually registered a decrease in the number of debit cards issued. Contacless payments however showed great progress across the board, with 26 countries now issuing contactless cards.
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