This is how Poles pay. You may be surprised

According to data from the National Bank of Poland, in the fourth quarter of 2023, 44 million payment cards with a contactless function are in use in Poland. This is a result of 276.6 thousand. better than in the previous quarter. What's more, they already constitute 97.2 percent. all payment cards used in Poland. This also has a direct impact on how we pay in stores.

Card payments in Poland

In total, in the fourth quarter of 2023, we made as many as 2.1 billion contactless transactions. It may be surprising that there were fewer of them than in the third quarter (by 92.7 million, or 4.2%), but at the same time their total amount increased by as much as PLN 3.5 billion, which is an improvement of 2.5 percent In total, thanks to contactless payments, we made purchases worth PLN 139.8 billion.

As if that were not enough, contactless payments constitute, in numerical terms, 97.1 percent. all non-cash transactions and 95 percent in terms of amounts. This shows that inserting a card into a terminal is now a truly rare event. The average value of each contactless transaction was PLN 66.6 and was 7.1% higher. than in the previous quarter.

However, we pay contactless not only with cards. More and more people also use smartphones, wristbands and smartwatches for this purpose. In total, all media enabling contactless payments, according to NBP data, were as many as 56.2 million in the last quarter of 2023, which means an increase by 669.6 thousand. (+1.2%).