Card payments surge more than 50 percent in February

ISTANBUL

Credit card payments increased by 53 percent year-on-year to reach 1.29 trillion Turkish Liras in February, according to data from the Interbank Card Center (BKM).

There were more than 131 million credit cards in use in the country as of last month, marking a 9 percent rise from a year ago, while the number of transactions with credit cards grew 8 percent year-on-year to 822 million.

Payments with debit cards were up 35 percent annually to 204 billion liras, while payments with pre-paid cards rose by 63 percent to 31 billion liras, the BKM data showed.

The combined payments with credit, debit and prepaid cards amounted to 1.52 trillion liras last month, marking a 50 percent increase from a year ago.

The number of transactions made with those cards rose by 5 percent year-on-year to 1.43 billion.

Online card payments increased by 50 percent annually to reach 444 billion liras.

The share of card payments made via the Internet in the total was 29 percent, unchanged from February last year.

The number of card payments made online increased by 2 percent compared to the same period last year, reaching 208 million transactions. The share of online card payments in the total was 15 percent.