Card payments “boom” in 2025 - BoA: 42% increase in POS payments. Albanians are “moving away” from physical cash
Purchases in stores or payments for services in bars, restaurants and others have begun to be widely made by card rather than cash. The year 2025 is showing a shift from the traditional way of making payments with cash to the electronic one.
According to data from the Bank of Albania, in the second quarter of this year, 2,779 new POS terminals were added, bringing their total number to almost 28,000.
Regarding card payments made at these terminals, the figures show a 42% increase compared to January-June 2024. Specifically, in the first half of 2025, 12.5 million card payments were made at POS terminals.
Also, payments worth 48.3 billion lek were made through the card at POS terminals during the January-June period.
Despite the fact that the number of businesses that own a POS terminal is increasing, there are also many businesses, especially in the smaller cities of the country, that do not have one. There are also cases where a store has a POS, but does not make it available to citizens for purchases of less than 300 lek or 1500 lek.
In order to have full coverage of businesses with POS terminals and to meet the demands of citizens or tourists who want to pay by card, but which is often not offered as a payment method by businesses, it is necessary for commercial banks to reduce POS usage fees.
The Medium-Term Revenue Strategy 2024-2027 foresees the creation of a working group 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 businesses, with the aim of promoting electronic payments.
Meanwhile, the American bank card company Mastercard, launched a program in Albania on May 1st to provide 4,750 free POS terminals for 1 year. The Albanian government aims to completely reduce this by the end of 2030, but for this, the necessary infrastructure must first be built to enable card payments anywhere and anytime.
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