Card payments in Turkey rose 35% to nearly 3 trillion lira in September

Turkey recorded 2.9655 trillion lira in card payments in September, a 35% increase from the same month last year.

The figures from the Interbank Card Center include credit, debit and prepaid cards, and cover 1.95 billion payment transactions.

Credit cards accounted for 2.5153 trillion lira of the spending, while debit cards accounted for 442 billion and prepaid cards for 8.2 billion.

Online card payments reached 901 billion lira, equal to 30% of the total value of card payments.

Contactless payments also grew: their value rose 43% to 1.0245 trillion lira, and four in five in-store card payments were contactless.

Debit card spending grew faster than credit card spending, while prepaid card spending fell 44% from a year earlier.

The figures show that card payments are becoming more common in Turkey, with online and contactless use accounting for substantial shares of spending.