Payment market participants will be able to analyze the behavior of payment card holders and payment market developments. This became possible due to the NBU’s expanding of statistical reporting indicators. In particular, in 2019 the NBU for the first time began collecting and releasing data on:
- the number of tokenized payment cards[1] and their use (NFC payments)
- the number and the value of cashless operations broken down by type (payments for goods/services using contactless technologies, money transfers from a card to a bank account).
This was the NBU’s response to increased demand of Ukrainians for innovative payment services increasing the popularity of contactless settlements using smartphones and other devices with NFC.
Today mobile and other device payments are an easy, fast, convenient and safe way to pay for goods/services. Tokenization services enable the use of payment card details (including magnetic stripe-only cards for contactless settlements using the NFC technology).
As at 1 April 2019, the number of tokenized payment cards in Ukraine is 1.1 million or 3% of the total active payment cards.
Continued positive developments of cashless settlements
All in all, Q1 2019 demonstrates a positive developments of cashless settlements that became common for Ukrainians. Thus, today in Ukraine 8 out of 10 payment card operations are cashless.
According to the results of Q1 2019, the share of cashless card settlements increased to 50% of all transactions. This is a 5 pp increase over the 2018 (45%). In general, Q1 of each year were noted for a plummeting card transactions caused by seasonal fluctuations.
In the current period, such increase in cashless transactions can be largely explained by:
- – decreasing number of cash withdrawals (by 10% in value and by 5% in number) in contrast to Q4 of 2018
- – stable positive trend of cashless transactions (increase by 0.2%) in contrast to Q4 of 2018.
The value of cashless payment card transactions increased by 45% qoq and amounted to UAH 395.5 billion, and the number of cashless transactions increased almost by 35% and accounted for UAH 906 million.
Cashless transactions by value:
- 39% or UAH 153 billion – money transfers from card to card (P2P transfers), the average check – UAH 1,576
- 17% or UAH 69 billion – on-line payments for goods/services, the average check – UAH 472
- 13% or UAH 52 billion – on-line money transfers from card to banks account (replenishment of deposits, repayment of loans etc.), the average check – UAH 264
- 29% or UAH 113 billion – POS-terminals payments (whereof 22% – contactless card settlements and 4% – NFS devices), the average check – UAH 250
- only 2% or UAH 8 billion – cashless SSK transactions, the average check – 593.
POS-terminals accounted for the most cashless transactions , i.e., almost 50% of the total transactions.
In first three months of 2019, the number of payment cards in Ukraine grew by 4% to UAH 61.8 million (whereof 60% are active payment cards). At the same time, the number of active contactless payment cards increased by 15% to 4.5 million. Already, one in nine active payment cards is contactless.
Expanding payment infrastructure in Ukraine
Increased demand of Ukrainians on cashless transactions and promotion of innovative financial services stimulated further expansion of the payment infrastructure.
From the start of 2019, the network of POS-terminals expanded by 4% to 289,600, whereof 6,000 are mobile payment POS-terminals (mPOS). At the same time, nearly 81% of POS-terminals in Ukraine have the contactless payment capability (as at 1 April 2019).
The ratio of POS terminals to the Ukrainian population at the beginning of the year increased by 3% and reached 7,300 per 1 million.
As before, the regional breakdown is noted for uneven distribution of the POS-terminals network. The least POS-terminals to population in noted in Zakarpattia (4,000 per 1 million), Donetsk (3,100 per 1 million, and Lukhansk (1,900 per 1 million) oblasts. The dominant regions are Kyiv city (19,100 per 1 million), Kyiv (10,500 per 1 million), Dnipropetrovsk (9,900 per 1 million), and Odessa (8,200 per 1 million) oblasts.
For reference: As at 1 July 2019, 73 members of payment cards systems operated in Ukraine.
[1] issued by changing the details of payment cards for unique digital identifiers further used for operations by means devices with NFC (in particular, using Apple Pay, Google Pay, Garmin Pay etc.).