Once the toughest phase of Covid-19 has been overcome, the trend of coexistence between different means of payment that began in 2020, which are used by consumers based on their preferences and the alternatives offered, is consolidated.
In this context, although the use of cash is recovering, the card retains its leading role in Peru while the percentage of the population that uses alternative digital means of payment continues to increase, especially through mobile phones.
Although cash is far from disappearing, it has been shown that it is being replaced by cards whose use has doubled between 2020 and 2021, going from 27.6% to 42.3%, according to the XI Report of Trends in Payment Methods, recently presented by Minsait Payments.
Thus, Peru is also above Mexico (40%) and Ecuador (31.5%) in the use of physical debit, credit and prepaid cards as the main means of payment, reaching 42.3% in the last year. In fact, the countries that have increased card payments the most were Peru (+14.7 pp) and Chile (+12.2 pp).
Likewise, the main means of payment had the following record in Peru among the banked population: 78% use physical cards (debit, credit, prepaid), 65.5% prefer account debits, transfers or direct debits, 61% use payment apps between individuals and 37.8% use wallets or card aggregators.
On the other hand, the holding of credit cards in countries such as Peru has remained stable over the last year compared to the fall experienced in other countries such as the United Kingdom and Portugal.
Currently, Peru has recovered the population that had a credit card, going from 47.5% to 57.8% compared to the last year. This has caused it to experience the second most pronounced increase in the frequent use of credit cards for high-value purchases, only behind Colombia.
However, despite this great improvement, Peru stands out for being a debit country, that is, more than 80% of the cards in circulation are of this type. It even continues to be one of the countries with the highest percentage of the banked population with two or more debit cards, reaching 56.2% of that population. POS payments with both cards remain stagnant and ATM withdrawals double their value.
The Minsait Payments Report has been carried out with the collaboration of International Financial Analysts (AFI) and has included the opinions of 225 managers and experts in the sector, as well as those collected in the 4,800 interviews conducted with the banked population of 13 Latin American countries and Europe, including Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Spain.
Source: Larepublica
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