In 2024 credit cards recovered prominence in the consumption of Argentines

First for the impact of devaluation and inflationary spark, and then as a consequence of the loss of rates and the appearance of promotions and quotas, Credit cards last year recovered their ally role of Argentines’ economy. As reported by the PAWAY index, which measures the evolution of the use of the different media of digital payments, in the last quarter of last year this type of plastic was used in the 61.2% of operations Made with cards, to the detriment of the use of debit.

“In the analysis by type of card, the participation of the credit card promoted by the longer financing plans “, He highlighted the Payway index, which is built from statistical data collected by the company from the products it manages, from its own post, QR terminals, own systems, ecommerce, automatic debit, public transport, among others, cash withdrawals , and electronic transactions for services and taxes. In addition, it is weighted with market information and statistics provided by INDEC and BCRA.

In fact, the data that Payway throws coincide with the latest retail payment report published by the Central Bank days ago. The monetary authority reported an increase of almost 23% in December past in the amount of operations made with credit with respect to what had been seen in December 2023 and a 7.7% drop in the use of the debit card. Although the latter beat credit when talking about the amount of operations, in the total amounts the credit card leads: in December operations were carried out by $ 8.1 billion, almost twice the payments that were made with debit.

“In credit card consumption, financing continues to grow through the fees driven by the decline of fees and the promotions of credit card issuers in long plans,” they detailed in Payway. The consumption made in a payment fell 58.6% a year ago to 55% in December. Those that are paid within a quota plan represent 30% of the total and most of these are made in two or three payments.

Payway’s report shows The growing digitalization of Argentines’ expenses, to the detriment of money Cash. The number of times this type of purchasing plastics was used fell 7% in the last quarter of last year; The cash withdrawal in shops was reduced almost 15% and cash extractions did it by 4.2%.

Here the BCRA data allow “zoom” about this type of behavior. According to the agency, 90% of cash extraccions are made via the atms network of the banks and Last month the Argentines extracted $ 3.2 billion. As countercarted, last December more than 43% increased money for immediate transfers and almost 74% had as its origin or destination a virtual wallet.

At the same time, Payway reported an increase of more than 268% interannual of operations carried out via QR code. These data are also seen in the BCRA report: according to the agency, transfers with the interoperable QR increased 58% in the last year.

Emiliano Porciani, Chief Bussiness Officer of Payway, commented that “2024 was a year of great advances in the digital transformation of payments in Argentina thanks to the deepening of the interoperability of the ecosystemthe reduction of the fiscal load, the implementation of “Pedí the POS”, which improves the operation and safety of card payments, and the impulse of new use cases such as payments with contactless cards and NFC devices in public transport in public transport , in addition to tips and, shortly, bimonnetarism, laying the foundations for a great opportunity for this 2025 ”.