Ukrainians tend to make more cashless settlements using convenient and safe payment instruments. As a result, in the first nine months of 2018 the share of cashless payments in total card (issued by Ukrainian banks) operations increased by 5.0 pp from 39.3% as of the end of 2017 and accounted for 44.3%.
In nine months of 2018, the total volume of payment card operations was 2.8 billion and the value amounted for over UAH 2 trillion. These figures are up by 27.2% and 38.5% yoy, respectively.
The volume of cashless operations exceeded 2.2 billion, whereof 1.1 billion operations (51.7%) accounted for retail payments via POS.
The value of such operations was UAH 902.7 billion with the following breakdown:
- UAH 312.0 billion - online transactions (34.6% of the total cashless operations)
- UAH 300.7 billion – card-to-card transfers (33.3%)
- UAH 267.8 billion – retail payments via POS (29.7%)
- UAH 22.2 billion – transactions via self-service devises (ATMs, SSK) (2.5%).
Such growth rates of cashless operations in Ukraine illustrate the real household demand for cashless settlements and innovation technologies.
As of 1 October 2018, comparing with the beginning of the year, the increase was in:
- the number of payment cards issued – by 1.3% up to 60.6 million
- the number of active payment cards – by 5.1% up to 36.6 million
- the number of contactless payment cards – by 31.4% up to 3.6 million
With a breakdown by card payment systems the number of active cards made up 21.4 million MasterCard cards, 11.3 million Visa cards, 0.4 million NPS PROSTIR cards, and 0.008 million others.
The Ukrainian market also continues to show a positive trend for expanding the payment infrastructure.
In nine months of 2018, the network of retail POS-terminals expanded by 13.6% to 263.5 thousand (as of 1 October 2018). At the same time, facilitation of innovative services as Apple Pay and Google Pay fosters development of contactless payment infrastructure. At present, already 78.7% (207.3 thousand) retail POS-terminals in the country offer contactless payments, which is a 3 pp increase from 75.7% as of 1 July 2018.
As of beginning of October 2018, there were 6.7 POS-terminals per 1,000 inhabitants in Ukraine. The leaders in POS-terminals per 1,000 inhabitants are Kyiv city, Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa oblasts. In Kyiv city this indicator is 17.8 terminals/1,000 inhabitants, in Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa oblasts – 9.1 and 7 respectively. However, there are also regions with a much lower indicator, for example, Ternopil – 3.8, Zakarpattia – 3.6, Donetsk – 2.8, and Luhansk – 1.6.
Trade and service businesses that offer customers the option to make cashless card payments since the beginning of 2018 have increased by 13% to 196.4 thousand companies (as of 1 October 2018).
In terms of regions, the city of Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv oblasts account for the largest number of payment cards and payment devices (the lowest indicators are indicative for Luhansk, Ternopil and Chernivtsi oblasts).
CB PrivatBank JSC, Oschadbank JSC, and Raiffeisen Bank Aval JSC remain the biggest payment card acquirers and issuing banks.
For reference: As of 1 October 2018, 76 banks operating in Ukraine are card payment system members.
