The issuance of bank cards in Russia in 2022 increased by 18% to 389.6 million

In 2021, the increase was 9% compared to 2020 (301 million cards), recalls RBC, which learned the statistics from the Central Bank. In previous years, the dynamics was on average +4-7%.

From the data of the Bank of Russia it is also known that:

• Russians in 2022 carried out card operations for 149.7 trillion rubles (an increase of 15.9%),
• the bulk of these transactions are non-cash payments (46.8 trillion rubles, an increase of 13%),
• in second and third place are transfers (73.3 trillion rubles, an increase of 22.6%) and cash withdrawals (29.5 trillion rubles, an increase of 5.6%).
• legal persons increased the number of cards to 6.9 million units (an increase of 24%, in 2021 it was 22.5%),
• in total, companies spent 5.6 trillion rubles on cards,
• key operations are payment for goods and services (3.4 trillion rubles, down 8.3%) and cash withdrawals (1.9 trillion rubles).

Experts believe that the reasons for the increase in the activity of bank card transactions are:

• reissue of Visa and Mastercard cards that left the Russian Federation to Russian Mir cards,
• additional opening of Mir or UnionPay cards to continue payments to employees and pay for communication services,
• as well as the issuance of cards in banks that were not included in the sanctions.

At the same time, experts point out that the increase in demand for cards has not caused a clear shortage of chips and plastic, since a good part of the new cards are digital.