Monthly Report on Retail Payments, March 2024

The month under analysis is March 2024, except for the following: push instant transfers, payments by transfer through the same payment service provider that offers payment accounts (proveedor de servicios de pago que ofrece cuentas de pago, PSPCP), withdrawals, credit cards, debit cards and transportation cards (information as of February 2024); and prepaid cards (information as of December 2023).

Instant push transfers increased 117.4% y.o.y. in volume.

• Administered by networks: there were 455.2 million instant push transfers for an amount of ARS24.5 trillion, climbing 117.4% y.o.y. in volume, and 10% y.o.y. in value. Sixty-nine point one percent of transfers (314.6 million) were made from or to a single virtual code known as CVU.
• Intra-PSPCP: transfers between accounts belonging to the same PSPCP reached ARS1.9 trillion (56.7% y.o.y.), involving 194.5 million transactions (127.3% y.o.y.).

Instant pull transfers reached 2.4 million transactions.

• There were 2.4 million transfers for an amount of ARS117.8 billion, rising 12% in volume and 22.2% in value against February.

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Payments by transfer (pagos con transferencia, PCTs): transactions with interoperable QR codes totaled 36.4 million.

• Interoperable: there were 42.6 million (36.3% y.o.y.) interoperable PCTs for a total of ARS435.8 billion (-35 % y.o.y.).
• QR code payments: 85.6% of interoperable PCTs were initiated through interoperable QR codes, accounting for over 36.4 million payments (324.5% y.o.y.) for an amount of ARS315.4 billion (245.2% y.o.y.). Payments from sight accounts represented 77.2%, and payments from payment accounts, 22.8%. Moreover, 55.7% of stores credited the funds in sight accounts, and 44.3%, in payment accounts.
  Sixty interoperable e-wallets are currently registered in the registry.
• Intra PSPCP: they reached 308.3 million for an amount of ARS2.9 trillion, rising 120.3% y.o.y. in volume, and 53.9% y.o.y. in value.

• Token payments: 14.4% of interoperable PCTs were made through a token, accounting for 6.1 million payments (54.5% y.o.y.) for an amount of ARS84.4 billion (34.7% y.o.y.).
• QR code payments: they accounted for 15.4%, reaching 47.4 million transactions (85.8% y.o.y.) for an amount of ARS480.6 billion (58.6% y.o.y.).
• Payment button: they accounted for the remaining 84.6%, reaching 260 million transactions (128% y.o.y.) for an amount of ARS2.5 trillion (53% y.o.y.).

Payment accounts and funds invested through PSPCPs:

In February, 16.2 million payment accounts with balances totaling ARS323.1 billion were recorded, whereas the balances of money market funds reached ARS1.2 trillion. Payment accounts and money market funds jointly accounted for 3.62% of total private sector deposits, which amounted to ARS42.1 trillion in that month. One hundred and forty-eight PSPCPs are currently registered in the registry.

Instant debit (DEBIN):

There were 36.2 million DEBINs (53.7% y.o.y.) for an amount of ARS1.4 trillion (36.7% y.o.y.). In terms of the number of transactions, 0.4% were one-time DEBINs and 99.6%, recurring DEBINs.

Direct debits:

There were 11.7 million debits (4.3% y.o.y.) for an amount of ARS731.1 billion (-25.9% y.o.y.), reaching a 57.6% success rate.

Checks: e-checks accounted for 69.2% of cleared amounts.

• A total of 4.1 million checks (in paper and electronic form) were cleared for ARS7.6 trillion. The share of e-checks in total cleared checks was 44.7% (1.8 million) in terms of volume and 69.2% (ARS5.2 trillion) in terms of value.
• Checks returned for insufficient funds: the rate of returned checks for insufficient funds over total cleared checks was 0.53% in terms of volume, and 0.32% in terms of value.

Cards: debit card use remained above credit card use.

• Debit cards: there were 237.9 million debit card transactions for an amount of ARS3.1 trillion, exhibiting a change of 34.4% y.o.y. in volume, and of 1.9% y.o.y. in value.
• Credit cards: the number of credit card transactions reached 124.8 million for an amount of ARS3.3 trillion, changing 20.7% y.o.y. in volume, and -1.3% y.o.y. in value.

Transportation prepaid cards:

There were 296.7 million trips (1.2% y.o.y.) paid with SUBE cards for a total of ARS48 billion (37.9% y.o.y.).

Electronic credit invoices for MSMEs (factura de crédito electrónica MiPyME, FCEM):

In March, 88.8% of transactions were made in pesos, with 169.3 thousand electronic invoices processed in the system for the open transfer of e-invoices (sistema de circulación abierta, SCA) for an amount of ARS823.7 billion.

Withdrawals:

Ninety percent of withdrawals are made from ATMs.

• Withdrawals from ATMs: 87.9 million withdrawals from 17,367 ATMs for an amount of ARS1.8 trillion. The average number of withdrawals per ATM was 5,066 with an average withdrawal amount of ARS21.1 thousand.
• Non-bank withdrawals through debit cards: 6.5 million transactions for an amount of ARS149.8 billion, with an average withdrawal amount of ARS23 thousand.
• Non-bank withdrawals from sight accounts, using networks of electronic funds transfers: 126 thousand transactions for an amount of ARS2.8 billion, with an average withdrawal amount of ARS22.1 thousand.
• Non-bank withdrawals from accounts belonging to the same PSPCP (closed loop): 2.9 million transactions for an amount of ARS78.2 billion, with an average withdrawal amount of ARS26.6 thousand.

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April 30, 2024