Card spending rose 129 percent in October

ISTANBUL

Spending with credit, prepaid and debit cards soared by 129 percent in October from a year ago to reach 377.4 billion Turkish Liras ($20.3 billion), according to data from the Interbank Card Center (BKM).

Credit cards accounted for 298 billion liras of all payments, while the share of debit cards was 72.5 billion liras. Prepaid cards were used in 6.9 billion worth of payments.

Spending with credit cards exhibited a 123 percent increase last month compared to October 2021, while payments with debit cards and prepaid cards increased 158 percent and 118 percent, respectively.

The number of credit cards in Türkiye rose 17 percent year-on-year to 96.8 million, and debit cards increased 13 percent to 166.7 million.

There were 68.8 million prepaid cards in the country as of end-October, up 26 percent from a year ago.

The number of total cards increased by 17 percent to reach 322.3 million, according to data from BKM.

The number of business credit cards reached 8.9 million, with payments with those cards rising 129 percent from a year ago to 97.8 billion liras. The share of business credit cards in total card payments increased to 33 percent.

Contactless payments leaped 67 percent last month compared with the same month of 2021 to 649 million transactions. Some 69 percent of payments made at stores were contactless, with the number of daily contactless transactions surpassing 20 million.