Card payments soar 122 percent

ISTANBUL

Payments made with credit cards, debit cards and prepaid cards stood at 836 billion Turkish Liras ($28.9 billion) in October, rising 122 percent from a year ago, according to the data from the Interbank Card Center (BKM).

Credit card payments soared 129 percent from October last year to 684 billion liras, while debit cards made up 137 billion liras of the total sum, up 89 percent from a year ago.

Payment with prepaid cards amounted to 15.5 billion liras in June, rising 126 percent year-on-year.

The number of transactions with credit, debit and prepaid cards was up by 26 percent to 1.4 billion, with credit cards accounting for 799 million and debit cards for 549 million of them.

There was a total of 113.9 million credit cards in use in Türkiye as of August, up 18 percent.

The number of debit cards increased by 12 percent to 186.2 million, while prepaid cards rose 25 percent to 85.8 million.

The Central Bank announced last week that the maximum interest rates for credit cards and maximum commission rates for merchants will remain unchanged in December.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) reported on Nov. 29 that the economic confidence index declined 1.3 percent in November from October.

Consumer confidence rose 1.1 percent month-on-month after improving 4.4 percent in October, the data showed.