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Electronic payments services continued to grow dynamically in the second quarter, while mobile payments saw a two-and-a-half-fold jump, according to the data of the Hungarian National Bank, reported Világgazdaság, a Hungarian economic site.
The central bank’s data shows that there have been no major changes in the volume of accounts held by payment service providers and the number of domestically issued payment cards, but the evolution of consumers’ card usage habits is becoming increasingly striking.
In the second quarter of this year, there were 6.8 million cards used for purchase transactions in the period under review. This figure is a record, almost 140,000 higher than the previous record.
At the same time, more and more people are registering their cards in their mobile wallets, with the number of cards registered now exceeding 1.5 million.
The number of online acceptance points that do not require the physical presence of a card continues to grow strongly, with almost 2,000 more than in the previous period, and fast approaching the 40,000 mark.
Recently, travel restrictions imposed globally due to the coronavirus epidemic have been almost completely lifted, and people are traveling abroad again. This is also reflected in the data, with the number of transactions for Hungarian purchases abroad increasing by 24% to almost 33 million.
Meanwhile, according to data from the central bank, there has been an increasingly dynamic growth in the use of innovative card-based services.
The number and value of mobile wallet purchase transactions carried out domestically and abroad with domestically issued payment cards increased by 150 and 161 percent respectively compared to the second quarter of 2021, exceeding HUF 391 billion (EUR 960 million).
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