Ukraine Going Cashless: Digital Bank Transactions Hit $21 Billion in 2018

Ukrainians with bank cards are gradually giving up the use of cash, according to a report published by the National Bank of Ukraine on Aug. 21 – the first in what is to be a regular series of NBU reports on cashless transactions.

In the first six months of 2018, Ukrainians conducted 1.5 billion cashless transactions worth $21 billion, the report reads.

That means that this year Ukrainian bank card holders made around 6 percent more such transactions than in same period last year. These include purchases made online — in internet stores, and card-to-card transactions — and with payment terminals in stores.

Most of the cashless operations, or 52 percent, took place in shops and supermarkets, where people spend on average $9 per transaction.

The average sum people paid on the internet was $14.

Ukrainians own 35 million active bank cards, almost all operated by the Mastercard (24 million) and Visa (10.7 million) payment systems.

However, most Ukrainians still mostly use their bank cards to get hold of cash: 66 percent of the operations with bank cards are simple cash withdrawals. The public withdrew a total of $27 billion in cash from ATMs from January to August, the NBU reported.

Source: Kyiv Post