Credit card payments increase 78 percent in November

Credit card payments rose by 78 annually in November, topping 1.3 trillion Turkish Liras ($37.2 billion), according to the Interbank Card Center (BKM).

There were 128.9 million credit cards in use in the country as of last month, marking an 11 percent rise from a year ago, while the number of transactions with credit cards grew 15 percent year-on-year to 895.2 million.

Payments with debit cards surged by 44 percent annually to more than 199 billion liras.

Payments with pre-paid cards went up by 92 percent to 31.1 billion liras, the BKM data showed.

The combined payments with credit, debit and prepaid cards amounted to 1.53 trillion liras in November, marking a 73 percent increase from a year ago.

The number of transactions made with those cards rose by 11 percent year-on-year to 1.55 billion.

Online payments with cards increased by 74 percent annually to reach 482 billion liras.

The share of card payments made via the Internet in the total was 31 percent, unchanged from November 2023.

The number of online card payments increased by 6 percent compared to the same period last year and reached 244 million, accounting for 17 percent of total card payments, according to BKM.

The amount of contactless payments was up 92 percent compared to the same period last year to 465 billion liras.