Visa market share in Ukraine rose to 45.6%, Mastercard down to 53.9% in 2022 - NBU

MOSCOW. May 16 (Interfax) - The Visa payment system increased its share of the Ukrainian payment card market to 45.6% in 2022 from 42.4% in 2021, while market leader Mastercard's share decreased to 53.9%, from 56.9%, respectively, Ukrainian media said, citing the National Bank of Ukraine's annual report.

The total number of Visa cards issued in 2022 increased from 37.8 million to 50.0 million, and Mastercard from 50.7 million to 59.2 million.

Visa had a market share of 34.4% in 2022 with 25.2 million cards, and Mastercard had 64.8% with 47.6 million.

In general, according to the NBU data, the total number of payment cards issued in Ukraine increased by 23.2% in 2022, from 89.1 million to 109.8 million, compared with 21.3% growth in 2021.

The number of payment cards issued and used to make payments in December was 46.3 million, or 42.2% of cards issued.

The National Bank said that during 2022, the number of contactless payment cards used for transactions increased: in December 2022, compared to December 2021, they had gone up 30.7% in number, from 20.0 million to 26.1 million. In total, 56.5% of the payment cards used for debit transactions in December 2022 were contactless cards.

The share of Prostir National Payment System cards decreased to 0.5% in 2022 from 0.7% in 2021, 0.8% in 2020 and 1% in 2019, and their total number decreased for the first time, from 0.6 million to 0.5 million.

The share of all other payment systems in 2022 was 0.04%, the National Bank said.

The leading payment cards issuers were the state-owned PrivatBank and Oschadbank with respectively 43.8% and 15.4%, as well as Universal Bank (mono) with 13.2%.

The number of payment terminals in the retail and service network decreased by 15.8% compared to 2021, to 359,200, of which 348,100 or 96.9% were contactless terminals. The number of banking devices such as ATMs, PTS and payment terminals fell 25.5% to 37,600.

PrivatBank had the largest number of payment terminals - 60.4%, Oschadbank - 19.6% and Raiffeisen Bank - 7.6%.