More Moldovans prefer to pay for goods or services with cards

Chisinau, 14 May /MOLDPRES/ - The payments with cards issued in Moldova, carried out in the country, increased by about 50 per cent in the first quarter of 2019 against the same period of the year before and reached a record share of 16.8 per cent of all transactions, according to data put out by the National Bank of Moldova (BNM).     

This is the ninth year in a row, when the payments by electronic means in trade units and other units providing services strongly increase, by far above the market’s average. Moldovans made shopping in Moldova and paid services at Point of Sale (POS) terminals worth 2.35 billion lei in all, against 61 million lei ten years ago in 2009.   

Every second operation with cards issued in Moldova, carried out in the country, represented non-cash payments. More than 87,000 transactions of payment through POS terminals for services or goods were carried out daily.

”The volume of payments with cards, made by Moldovans, is doubled after each two years. In these conditions, it is necessary to urgently create a national system of payments,” economist Veaceslav Ionita has said.  

Ionita noted that payments with cards made by Moldovans outside the country prevailed in 2016 and in the last three years, due to the fact that the payments with card grow in Moldova 1.5-2-fold more quickly than abroad, for two years already, the payments inside the country exceed those made abroad. Under these circumstances, it is inopportune to pay commissions to systems from outside Moldova, given that already 60 per cent of transactions are made inside the country. Thus, all bank cards issued by banks from Moldova must have two payment systems: the national one – for payments with card inside Moldova and another one for the international systems for payments with card outside the country.  

The impressive growth of the payments by electronic means is also prompted by the development of infrastructure. A number of 18,419 POS terminals set in the networks of shops, fuel supply stations and other units for providing services or commerce are available for the owners of those more than 1.9 million cards in circulation in the end of the first quarter. There were 16,813 POS terminals in late March 2018.   

BNM’s data also shows that the operations with cards issued in Moldova, carried out abroad, maintained their tendencies in the last years, a relatively stronger increase of the operations’ value and a high share of non-cash payments. The transactions abroad, carried out by owners of Moldovan cards, amounted to 1.6 billion lei in the first quarter and almost 90 per cent of all operations represented non-cash payments.

The latest statistics confirms economists’ estimations – the value of payments with cards issued in Moldova in the country exceeded the transactions carried out by Moldovans from abroad by 900 million lei in the first quarter of this year.

According to BNM, the overall value of the operations with cards issued in Moldova in January-March 2019 exceeded 13.98 billion lei – by 2.5 billion lei above the level recorded in the same period of the year before.

On the other hand, foreigners or Moldovans who have cards issued abroad spend about 1.7 billion lei in Moldova in January-March this year, against 1.56 billion lei in the same period of 2018.

The incomes on Moldovans’ cards issued in the country in 2019 will amount to 67 billion lei and will exceed the cash revenues for the first time ever. Ten years ago, citizens’ revenues on banks cards had a share of 25 per cent against the cash revenues and at present, they account for a half of the overall revenues collected by Moldovans, especially the salary ones, the expert of the Viitorul Institute, Veaceslav Ionita, has earlier said.