Madrid, June 23 (EFECOM).- Cards continue to gain ground compared to cash in Spain and are already used to pay for more than 270 purchases per second, according to data from the Bank of Spain, which has detected an increase in their use. 12% year-on-year in the first quarter of the year.
Specifically, between January and March of this year, card purchases increased in Spain by 12.21% year-on-year, up to 2,132 million operations, the highest figure in a first quarter since records began, according to the latest statistics. quarterly on this type of payments, published this week by the Bank of Spain.
In those three months, 23.4 million transactions were made with credit or debit cards each day, which means that almost one million operations (976,000) were made every hour. Likewise, every minute, almost 16,300 transactions were made and every second, an average of 271 payments with this means of payment.
The volume of all these operations also broke a quarterly record since the historical series of these data were published (January 2005), with a combined amount of 61,946 million euros, which represents a growth of almost 8% compared to the same period of the previous year.
The number of cards in circulation in Spain also increased by almost 2.9%, reaching 91.34 million units, of which 49.35 million units were debit (4.24% more than last year). a year) and the other 41.99 million were credit cards (1.29% more).
These advances lead to a decrease in the use of cash. This translates into fewer money withdrawals from banks and ATMs.
Thus, the number of ATMs continued to decline, as has been happening gradually in recent years, also catalyzed by the numerous bank mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in the Spanish financial sector.
This reduction could increase if the public takeover bid (takeover bid) launched by BBVA to acquire Banco Sabadell is finally carried out, an operation that the Catalan bank itself is currently opposed to.
Thus, at the end of the first quarter of 2024, 43,258 ATMs of all brands and entities were operating in Spain, 4.24% less than at the end of the same period of the previous year.
This means that since the historical maximum of 61,714 ATMs that served the needs of the population in 2008, almost 18,500 ATMs have disappeared throughout Spain, according to these data.
In any case, in 2023, 65% of the population used cash daily and for 60% it continued to be the main or most common means of payment for making purchases in physical stores in Spain, according to data also from the Bank. from Spain.
Even so, access to cash is thus becoming increasingly difficult in certain areas of Spain, such as in small towns that are left without bank offices, a financial exclusion that the Government is trying to improve in recent years.
In fact, the Minister of Economy, Commerce and Business, Carlos Body, pointed out this week in the Congress of Deputies that 93% of the municipalities with more than 500 inhabitants that did not have financial services already have them through different means, including the ATMs, buses and offices themselves, which serve more than 140,000 people.
At the same time, the number of dataphones or POS terminals – point of sale terminals – for paying by card in all types of establishments and businesses grew by almost 7% between January and March and exceeded 2.5 million units, placing itself specifically at 2,561 million. EFECOM
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