July 13, 2023 – In 2022, Croatian citizens made 682.34 million card payment transactions. That amounted to 13.1 percent more than in 2021, with a total value of HRK 230.67 billion, or 14.6 percent more, Croatian National Bank (CNB) reports.
At the end of last year, writes 24Sata, a total of 21 credit institutions and two electronic money institutions in Croatia issued payment cards, according to the new CNB publication Payment cards and card transactions – 2022.
The CNB also states that in recent years there have been changes in the domestic card market based on technologies that also affect payment methods. Thus, certain forms of payment are incomparable to the prevailing methods of payment ten years ago. For example, cards are added to various digital wallets, which use applications that enable the sharing of costs, smartwatches are used to initiate payments, etc.
CNB Breakdown
Card payment is increasingly used for online shopping; the CNB points out. In the last three years, the total number of transactions for purchasing goods and services using payment cards online has increased by 30 percent and the value by 48 percent, to HRK 7.25 billion.
Furthermore, as a consequence of the continuous growth of card payment and the increasing number of innovative payment methods based on card technologies, in the last few years, a trend of a slight but constant increase in the number of transactions paid with payment cards compared to the number of transactions paid with cash has been observed.
However, when it comes to the ratios of card and cash payments in the past period, about one in four fiscalized accounts were paid by card, while the remaining three accounts were paid by cash. Nevertheless, consumers in Croatia increasingly choose a payment card to pay bills (especially bills with larger amounts), and the share of bills paid by card could soon exceed one-third, the CNB emphasizes.
