In the first nine months of 2017, Hungarian bank card owners made purchases of a total value of HUF 588.5 billion on the internet, which represents a 34.1% growth year-on-year, according to statistics from the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) cited by Világgazdaság.
The rapid expansion of the market is demonstrated by the equivalent figure for the first nine months of 2014, when the value of online purchases with bank cards totaled only HUF 222 bln.
A similar growth rate was seen in terms of the number of online transactions, which grew by 35.2% in the first nine months of 2017 to over 54.1 million. Meanwhile, the average value per transaction slightly decreased in this period, as a consequence of the growth in the number of transactions slightly outpacing the increase in value.
The majority of purchases were made in Hungary, representing 61.7% of the total value of transactions.
The use of bank cards grew significantly for physical transactions as well, with the number of such transactions up 25.2% to 447.9 mln in the first nine months of 2017, while their total value grew 25.7% to almost HUF 3.144 trillion.
The increase in bank card use is in no small part due to the growth of POS terminals in shops – which increased in number by 16.7% over one year up to the end of September – and the spread of contactless bank cards, noted Világgazdaság.
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