Photo: Tirachardz on FreepikAccording to the latest data from the National Bank of Serbia, last year the number of online purchases with cards and electronic money in dinars increased by more than a third compared to 2021. In the report for the third quarter, the total increase in the number of mobile banking users is 23.76 percent, and users of electronic banking are 9.13 percent, Blic Biznis reports.
As the statistics of the Central Bank show, a total of 21.6 million card and electronic money transactions of goods and services in dinars were carried out in the nine months of last year. A year earlier, that number for the same period was about five million lower, and more than three times lower in 2020. During that period, 56.8 billion dinars were spent on internet shopping, almost half as much as the year before.
In the third quarter of 2022, entrepreneurs paid 27.31 percent more through mobile banking than in the same quarter of the previous year, according to the latest NBS Report.
The number of card and electronic money transactions in which goods and services were purchased via the Internet recorded stable growth year-on-year. Thus, in the third quarter of 2022, 10,854,002 transactions for the purchase of goods and services using cards and electronic money were carried out on the Internet in all currencies, which is 52.59 percent more than in the third quarter of 2021. At the same time, the number of dinar payments for purchases via Internet sites increased by 55.52 percent compared to the third quarter of 2021, which confirms the interannual trend of the number of transactions in dinars.
In the first nine months of last year, the value of online purchases in dinars increased by almost 48 percent and in euros by as much as 81.4 percent. The number of transactions for the purchase of goods and services on the Internet using cards and electronic money in US dollars increased by approximately 28%; they were worth more than 100 million dollars, and approximately 78 million for the first nine months of 2021. Online shopping in British pounds from January to September was worth £9.2 million, up a third on the previous year. Internet payments in Swiss francs jumped by 88.6 percent, but the number of transactions and value are lower than in other currencies—about two million francs.
As for card purchases, there were more than 109 million of them in stores in Serbia, which is 20 percent more than the previous year. These are the "plastics" statistics provided by our market's banks. A much bigger jump was recorded by cards from abroad: 32.19 percent. This indicates the continuation of the growth trend in the consumption of foreign tourists, the Central Bank explains.
The number of payment cards issued at the end of the third quarter of 2022 was 10,540,487, which is 3.32 percent more than at the end of the third quarter of 2021.
An increase of 23.93 percent in online loans compared to the previous year was also recorded.
Source: Blic Biznis
