41.2 million euros spent per day on plastic cards in Portugal

In Portugal the preferred payment option for many customers is a bank card. The increasing trend to use plastic when making payments for purchases and services was recently confirmed by the report released this week by card payment institution Unicre containing the data for the first half of this year. Credit cards were found to be most popular with an increase in their use to 9.5 percent up until June 2008.

Within the first half year 2008 the amount of money transacted with the national bank cards in the country made up 7.5 billion euros which is 8.5% higher than in the same period last year.

The average of transactions made using a Portuguese bank card accounted for one million a day with 41.2 million euros spent per day.

Irrespective of great popularity enjoyed by debit cards which were used to make 70% of all payments use of credit cards is rising, now representing 9.5 percent compared with 7.1 percent a year ago.

The report follows the revelation that Portuguese use their bank cards more than any other European nation to pay for purchases. In 2006 payments made with either credit or debit cards in Portugal amounted almost two-thirds (63.3 percent) which placed the country at the top of European card users.

Thus Portugal became the leader among the 27 European Union states, narrowly beating Denmark and Sweden into second and third places, respectively.