Value of transactions with Croatian-issued cards up 4.0% in Jan-Sept - HGK

The number of payment cards in Croatia - a market of around 4.3 million, rose 1.6% on the year to 8.7 million by the end of September, HGK said in a statement.

The debit and credit cards issued by 26 banks accounted for 88.4% of all cards in circulation while the remainder of cards were issued by two card companies. When it comes to the total number of credit cards, 45.3% where issued by local banks while the remainder were issued by card companies.

The share of smart cards in the total card count stood at 92.4% at the end of September.

The number of card transactions rose 7.1% on the year to 244 million throug the nine-month period.

There were a total of 4,261 ATMs in Croatia at the end of September, up 3.5% compared to a year earlier. The number of POS terminals rose 6.0% to 101,166 in the review period.

The average POS transaction value during the first nine months of the year amounted to 246 kuna, 8.0 kuna less than in the same period last year.

(1 euro=7.6646 Croatian kuna)