The number of payment cards used by Croatians continues to rise, reaching about 8.9 million at the end of 2017, with 79 percent of them debit cards, and 21 percent credit cards, according to data presented at an international conference on payment cards.

Zrinka Petroci from the Croatian central bank said that the 8.9 million card in 2017 represented a 0.8 percent increase from the year before, with them being increasingly replaced by contactless cards, which currently account for 23.8 percent of all payment cards.

Around 3.38 million Croatians – or 79 percent of all citizens – have at least one payment card. Around 52 percent of card-holders only have debit cards, and on average there are 2.5 cards per user issued, she said at the SmartCard 2018 conference, held in the northern Adriatic town of Opatija on Tuesday.

There is a total of 4.4 million cards in active use – meaning at least one transaction is made using them in a given year – or 50.4 percent of all cards held by Croatians. Some 44 percent of cards aren’t used at all, and 5.7 percent of cards have been blocked for various reasons.

The value of transactions paid for by cards also continues to grow. In 2017 there were more than 430 million card payments registered in the country, worth in total 148.4 billion kuna (€20 billion). The number of transactions rose by 8.4 percent compared to 2016, while their value rose 6.8 percent.

Around two thirds of all transactions – or 67 percent – were used to pay for goods and services, while 26 percent were cash withdrawals.

There were also close to 5,000 ATMs installed in the country in 2017, and around 120,000 card payment machines.

(€1 = 7.42 kuna)

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