Ukrainians are increasingly abandoning cash: over 95% of card transactions are cashless

In the first half of 2025, Ukrainians made a record number of cashless payments – their share reached over 95% of all payment card operations. The total amount of such transactions exceeded UAH 2.2 trillion, which is more than 11% more than last year. This was reported by the National Bank of Ukraine, writes UNN.

DetailsAccording to the NBU, in January–June 2025, Ukrainians conducted 4.6 billion card operations totaling almost UAH 3.4 trillion. At the same time, more than two-thirds of the total amount (65.3%) accounted for cashless payments, which are becoming increasingly common both in stores and in the online sphere.

The most popular way to use a card is payment in retail and service networks, which accounts for almost half of the total cashless amount. Transfers from card to card (27.4% of the amount) and online payment for goods and services (16.1%) also remain quite active.

Average check and new trends

• average in-store card purchase – UAH 342 (compared to UAH 321 last year);
• average card-to-card transfer – UAH 1,835;
• average online payment – UAH 589.

Experts note a gradual decrease in the share of operations where the card is physically read at the terminal: now it is only less than 3% of all transactions. The rest are contactless payments via card or smartphone.

Infrastructure development

• the number of POS terminals increased by 7.9% and reached 536 thousand;
• the number of retail outlets accepting cards increased by 10% – to 571 thousand;
• at the same time, the ATM network decreased by 1.2% – to 15.5 thousand.

In total, over 140 million payment cards have already been issued in Ukraine, but only a part of them remain truly active. It is interesting that almost 60% of all active cards are contactless, and the number of tokenized cards (Apple Pay, Google Pay, and others) has grown to 17.8 million.

Ukraine is confidently moving towards a cashless economy, where bank cards or smartphones are gradually replacing cash even in small payments. The growing popularity of contactless and tokenized payments indicates the technological maturity of Ukrainian users and the development of payment infrastructure even in wartime.

Currency exchange rate on August 20: hryvnia depreciated8/20/25, 8:48 AM • 1632 views