Turkey on Wednesday was rated as the country with the highest banking cards users in Europe with a total of 214 million banking cards, comprising both debit and credit cards, thereby overtaking the U.K and Germany.
The Deputy General Manager of the Interbank Card Center (BKM), Cenk Temiz, gave this figures to the state-run Anadolu Agency, saying that “as of end-2018, there were 148 million debit cards and 66 million credit cards in the country. The number of banking cards in the country as at 2018 totalled 195 million in 2017.
Temiz also reported that, in the country with 82 million population, the share of card payments in consumption expenditures was 38 percent currently, while the corresponding figure was some 15 percent 10 years ago.
He explained: “In some north European countries the share of cards in consumption is 75 percent. It would be good if we could raise cards’’ share in Turkey to 50 percent.”
The BKM boss noted that a total of 5.5 billion transactions were carried out annually through banking cards.
Temiz clarified further: “In January last year the size of the payments through credit cards stood at 54 billion Turkish Liras [$10.2 billion], while in the first month of 2019, expenditures through cards amounted to 62 billion liras, some 15 percent increase on an annual basis.
“Payments through banking cards increased to 71 billion liras in January this year from 61 billion liras a year ago. We expect payment though banking cards to increase by 15 percent this year which is in line with the inflation rate”, he added.
He noted that some 18 percent of payment through cards was made online
Statistical data from the country’s Central Bank, indicated that credit card debt in the country totalled 102 billion liras as of Feb. 15, pointing to a 13.8 percent increase on an annual basis.
According to the data by the Central Bank, the delinquency rate on credit cards stood at between 6 percent and 6.4 percent in January last year, while the non-performing loans to total loans ratio in the banking sector industry was 3 percent, up from 2.7 percent in January last year.
In Turkey, the banking industry watchdog BDDK recently eased regulations for payments with credit cards, increasing the number of installments in the purchases of vacations and computers —excluding tablets — to 12 months from the previous nine and six months, respectively.
Under the new regulatory regime, consumers will be able to pay for health-related expenditures in 12-month installments through their credit cards.
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