Retail Payment Services 2018

Abstract

The use of payment cards continues to increase. In 2018, the number of transactions using Norwegian payment cards totalled 2.5 billion and the average number of card transactions per inhabitant was 475. The average value of card transactions was NOK 382. Internet payments with cards increased further and now account for 12 percent of all payments with Norwegian cards. The increase in mobile payments was also pronounced, increasing from 91 million in 2017 to 141 million in 2018. A larger share of mobile payments are now directly debited from bank accounts, and most are made via the instant payments infrastructure. Approximately one million instant payments were made in 2017, a figure that had risen to 58 million in 2018. There was a further decline in the use of the cash infrastructure. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of withdrawals from ATMs and points of sale (POS) declined by 13 and 18 percent, respectively. The decline in ATM and POS cash withdrawals is nothing new, but has been particularly pronounced in recent years. Sample-based surveys from Norges Bank indicate that cash is currently used in approximately every tenth payment made by private individuals at points of sale and for person-to-person (P2P) payment transactions.