Credit card payments surged 69 percent annually in January

ISTANBUL

Credit card payments increased by 69 percent year-on-year to reach 1.3 trillion Turkish Liras ($356 billion) in January, according to data from the Interbank Card Center (BKM).

There were 128.9 million credit cards in use in the country as of last month, marking a 9 percent rise from a year ago, while the number of transactions with credit cards grew 15 percent year-on-year to 914 million.

Payments with debit cards surged by 47 percent annually to 208 billion liras, while payments with pre-paid cards went up by 78 percent to 32.4 billion liras, the BKM data showed.

The combined payments with credit, debit and prepaid cards amounted to 1.6 trillion liras in January, marking a 66 percent increase from a year ago.

The number of transactions made with those cards rose by 12 percent year-on-year to 1.58 billion.

Online payments with cards increased by 70 percent annually to reach 485 billion liras.

The share of card payments made via the Internet in the total was 30 percent, slightly higher than 29 percent in January last year.

The number of card payments made online increased by 8 percent compared to the same period last year, reaching 230.3 million transactions. The share of online card payments in the total was 15 percent.