83 billion lek in card payments via POS - BoS: Last year marked a record number of terminals installed by businesses
Last year, businesses installed a record number of POS terminals. Currently, there are about 24 thousand POS terminals in Albania, with about 5 thousand more added in 2024 alone, or 27.6% more than in 2023. This is the largest increase ever recorded in terms of the installation of these devices.
The latest data from the Bank of Albania shows that in the past year, around 19 million card payments were made through POS terminals. Card payments made at POS terminals amount to 83 billion lek in total, almost 30% more than in the previous year.
But how are they distributed by region?
As with ATMs, Tirana, Shkodra and Gjirokastra were the 3 regions with the largest number of POS terminals, while each of the other regions has less than 1,000 terminals. Given that the population and economic activity is more concentrated in Tirana, the capital results in over 18,000, followed in second place by Shkodra with 1,711.
Compared to other Western Balkan countries, Albania has the highest value of money circulating outside banks, i.e. the use of physical money by citizens. In order to reduce cash in the economy, a working group is expected to be created within this year between the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Albania and the Association of Banks to reduce commissions for the use of POS terminals between second-tier banks and taxpayers.
Businesses still have high commissions for transactions they make with POS terminals. Given that the commission for a transaction varies from 2%-3%, many small businesses that have a POS terminal do not make it available to citizens for card payments under 1500 lekë and others for payments under 300 lekë.
Reducing commissions would encourage businesses to install even more POS terminals than they currently have, thus creating more opportunities for citizens to make card payments and eliminating the use of physical cash.
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