The beginning of the change in shopping and payment methods came with the enforcement of capital controls in Greece. The parallel need for more sales points to be equipped to facilitate consumers demand for making payments by card has meant that a total of 280,000 P.O.S. are now live in the Country.
The change in the trend for using “plastic money”, offers being made by banks with the use of their cards and announcement of the association of this spending now being linked to future tax relief, have led to record breaking figures being reached in the retail sector in the run up to Christmas 2016.
In comparison to Christmas 2015, the amount of transactions using cards this year, went up by 60%. The convenience of using cards for direct payment and not only for cash withdrawals has been a major convenience during the period of capital controls.
11,5 million debit cards are now in circulation in Greece whereas, only 2,7 million credit cards.
It is worth mentioning, that the previous record breaking date for the volume of transactions with bank cards, was recently, on the 25th November this year. The first time Greek retailers adopted the idea of “Black Friday”, with selected special offers in most shops.