Cards Are Mostly Used for Cash Withdrawals

In Croatia, the trend of growth in card business has continued, with a total of 8.7 million credit and debit cards at the end of June this year.

This is 1.8 percent more than in June of the previous year, according to data from the 16th International Conference SmartCard 2015, which began on Monday in Opatija. The value of all card transactions was 60.02 billion kuna, which is 3.5 percent more compared to June last year, and a total of 169.2 million transactions were conducted, or 5.9 percent more, as reported at this conference on technologies, standards, and the application of chip cards in financial, commercial, and other activities, which gathered participants from banks, economic systems, and IT companies, and will last until September 23.

Speaking about the development and trends in card payments, Vanja Dominović from the Croatian Chamber of Economy stated that there were 7.9 million smart cards at the end of June this year, or 0.2 percent more than in June 2014, while the total share of smart cards, among which contact cards prevail, was 91.2 percent.

According to data for 2014, there were the most debit cards from banks (79.2), followed by credit cards from banks (9.9 percent) and card companies (10.9 percent), while, according to types, by the end of June this year, the total number of cards consisted mostly of debit cards (77.1 percent), then credit cards (20.6 percent), and slightly fewer prepaid cards (2.3 percent). There were 1.8 million credit cards at the end of June this year, of which 53.1 percent were card company cards, and 46.9 percent were credit cards from banks.

The most transactions were for cash withdrawals in Croatia (60 percent), followed by payments in Croatia (35.4 percent), payments abroad (3.6 percent), and the least for cash withdrawals abroad (1 percent). In the first six months, there were 50.9 million transactions at ATMs, worth 36.2 billion kuna, which is 0.71 percent more transactions, and a 2.2 percent lower value of transactions compared to June last year.

On a total of 103,128 EFT POS terminals in the first half of the year, 111.7 million transactions were conducted, with a total value of 25.2 billion kuna, which is 13.8 percent more transactions compared to June last year, and a total of 15.4 percent higher value. During this period, 28 banks operated in Croatia, of which 25 and two card companies conducted card business.

Dominović noted that compared to the end of 2000, the number of cards increased by 3.6 times, the number of ATMs by 5.5 times, and the number of EFT POS terminals by 11 times. In the period from the end of June 2014 to the end of June 2015, the number of ATMs and EFT POS devices increased by about 3 percent, as it did the previous year, the total number of cards increased by almost 2 percent, which is a higher growth than in the previous year, with a smaller growth of smart cards, and both the total value and number of transactions increased.