Czechs spent one-fifth more using credit cards than last year, financial daily reports

According to the financial daily Hospodářské noviny, Czech consumers last year spent one-fifth more using payment cards. The number of venues where it is possible to shop using a credit or debit card grew by 18 percent from 2014 to almost 108,000. One factor in the increase is contactless payment, speeding up small transactions. Now, seven out of ten cards offer the service.

Photo: Štěpánka Budková

In 2015, Czechs spent a record 447.4 billion crowns using payment cards, a rise by one-fifth from the previous year. According to statistics compiled by the Czech Republic’s Bank Card Association suggest that the use of plastic just about quadrupled over the last ten years.

Contactless payment is available at three-fifths of venues; last year 63 percent of 580 million purchases were through credit or debit cards. Single purchases average at 771 crowns, Hospodářské noviny noted. The amount of money withdrawn using bank machines? 686 billion crowns and the average amount of a ‘single’ withdrawal was 3,841 crowns.

The first bank to offer contact-free cards was Citibank back in 2011; at present all domestic banks with the exception of Sberbank provide the service, the daily points out.

The head of Visa for the Czech Republic and Slovakia Marcel Gajdoš, meanwhile, confirmed for the daily that contactless payments had affected the market significantly, leading to fewer ATM withdrawals as customers became more and more used to making smaller purchases using plastic. Given no PIN number is required on amounts up to 500 crowns, transactions speed up significantly.