Credit card payments increase 86 percent in September

ISTANBUL

Credit card payments showed an annual increase to 86 percent in September, hitting 1.22 trillion Turkish Liras, according to the Interbank Card Center (BKM).

There were 127.2 million credit cards in use in the country as of September, marking a 13 percent rise from a year ago, while the number of transactions with credit cards grew 16 percent year-on-year to 913.2 million.

Payments with debit cards surged 48 percent compared to September last year to more than 200 billion liras.

Payments with pre-paid cards rose 104 percent to 28.8 billion liras, showed BKM data.

The combined payments with credit, debit and prepaid cards amounted to 1.45 trillion liras, marking a 79 percent increase from a year ago.

The number of transactions with those cards rose by 13 percent year-on-year to 1.58 billion.

Online payments with cards increased by 88 percent annually to reach 428.5 billion liras.

The share of card payments made via the Internet in the total was 29 percent.

The number of online card payments increased by 11 percent compared to the same period last year and reached 225.1 million, accounting for 15 percent of total payments, according to BKM.

The amount of contactless payments leaped by 93 percent compared to the same period last year to 458.8 billion liras. Some 4 out of every 5 card payments made in-store in September were contactless transactions.