SIA: AT CHRISTMAS +26% PURCHASES WITH CARDS, +33% IN TRADITIONAL STORES

In the week from 18th to 24th December, 92 million transactions using debit, credit and prepaid cards of which 77 million were physical payments and 15 million were made online

278 million card payments from the start of December: +30% in traditional channels and +8% in e-commerce compared to last year

Milan, 27th December 2018 – There were 92 million payments using debit, credit and prepaid cards, issued in Italy and processed by SIA, during the week up to Christmas (from Tuesday 18th to Monday 24th December 2018), compared to the 65 million in the same period last year (+26%); of these approximately 77 million related to traditional stores, representing almost 84% of the total, up 32.8% over 2017, while the volume of online purchases has not changed (15 million payments).

In the period from 1st to 24th December 2017, SIA processed overall 278 million transactions with cards, up almost 25% compared to the 223 million in the same period of 2017. In particular, around 20% of the total of payments with card related to purchases on e-commerce sites adding up to a total of 55 million transactions (+7.8% over the same period in 2017). The increase of payments in traditional stores was more significant (+29.7%).

It should be noted that the peak in card payments was recorded on Saturday 22nd December with 15.6 million transactions, of which 13.6 million were made in physical stores and around 2 million online.

SIA manages around half of all payments made with debit, credit and prepaid cards in Italy.