The number of payments by cards issued by resident payment service providers was 9.6 percent up to 222.2 million in Q2 this year compared to the year-ago period, while the amount of payments was 28.27 billion lei, according to the platform dreptullabanking.ro, titled after the financial intermediation campaign ran by Romanian banks - #TheRightToBanking.
Citing preliminary statistical data provided by the banking institutions to the National Bank of Romania, card transactions increased by 9.3 percent in the reporting period, with the volume of POS card transactions amounting to 15.68 billion lei. This type of transactions advanced 7.2 percent from 14.62 billion lei in the same period of 2019.
The total number of cards in circulation in Romania as of end-June 2020 was 18.43 million, 4.1 percent higher compared to 17.7 million a year ago.
Of these, 15,430,130 were debit cards and 2,907,432 were credit cards. In this context, statistics show that Romania has less than one bank card per capita, one of the lowest rates in the European Union, due to the preference for cash payments.