Report on Retail Payments

The month of analysis is April 2026 except for withdrawals, credit cards, debit cards and transport cards that the information corresponds to March 2026 and prepaid cards to March 2026 (latest available data).

In April, remittances in pesos (immediate “push” transfers) saw a growth in amounts of 26% YoY.

− In pesos: 725.7 million transactions were registered for $85.3 billion, implying year-on-year increases of 26% and 14.3% in amounts and real amounts, respectively. 76.3% of the transactions had a CVU as their origin and/or destination.
− In foreign currency: 2.2 million operations were registered (17.2% YoY) for USD 3,503 million (31.2% YoY in currency of origin).

Income of money in pesos (“pull” immediate transfers) reached 41.5 million operations in April.

− 41.5 million transfers were made for $4.1 trillion, representing year-on-year increases of 13.7% in amounts and 10.1% in real amounts.

Interoperable payments by transfer (PCTs) using QR codes totaled 99.6 million transactions in pesos.

− 100.9 million PCT operations were carried out (62.5% YoY) in pesos, for a total of $2.3 trillion (68.9% YoY in real terms).

o QR: 98.8% of PCTs were initiated with QR codes, representing 99.6 million payments (65.6% YoY) for $2.3 trillion (73.3% YoY in real terms). 53.5% were made by customers who used their demand accounts (CBU) and 46.5% in their payment accounts (CVU). On the other hand, in stores, 51.9% of transactions were credited to payment accounts, while the remaining 48.1% were channeled to demand accounts.

Currently, 89 interoperable digital wallets and 62 PCT acceptors are registered with the BCRA.

o With random keys: 1.2% used a token for the start of PCTs; It is about 1.2 million operations (-34.3% YoY) for $39.7 billion (-30.9% YoY in real terms).

Payment accounts and funds invested through payment service providers that offer payment accounts (proveedores de servicios de pago que ofrecen cuentas de pago, PSPCPs)

In March, out of a total of 69.7 million payment accounts, 16.1 million had a balance for a total of $ 0.7 billion pesos. For its part, the balances invested in FCI of money reached $ 7.1 trillion in the same month. Considered together, both concepts represented 7% of the total deposits in pesos of the private sector. A total of 219 PSPCPs are currently included in the Register of Payment Service Providers.

Direct debit

In April, 11 million direct debits were made (-8.4% YoY) for a total of $1.9 trillion (1.6% YoY in real terms). The effectiveness rate reached 41.9%.

Checks. 83.9% of the amounts compensated in April corresponded to ECHEQ.

− 4.7 million checks (physical and electronic in pesos) were cleared for a total of $22.2 billion. ECHEQ’s share of the total number of cleared persons reached 62.5% in quantities (2.9 million electronic checks) and 83.9% in amounts ($18.6 billion), with increases of 8 percentage points (p.p.) and 4.7 p.p. compared to April 2025.
− Likewise, given the implementation of the ECHEQ in dollars, in April 156 checks were cleared for a total amount of USD 21 million.
− Rejections for reasons of “insufficient funds”: the ratio to the total compensated totaled 2.2% in quantities and 1.4% in amounts, remaining unchanged compared to March in terms of quantities and showing a reduction of 0.2 p.p. in amounts in the same period.

Cards. The use of credit cards surpassed debit cards

− Debit: 168.1 million transactions were made for $4.9 trillion pesos in March (latest available data), with decreases of 10.9% YoY in amounts and 18.1% YoY in real amounts. Likewise, in March, 11.6 thousand transactions were made in foreign currency for USD 5.8 million (97.5% were processed through the e-commerce channel).
− Credit: year-on-year variations of -0.4% in amounts and -8.5% in real amounts were observed, with 183.5 million payments being made for $10.7 trillion. The most used channels, considering quantities, were e-commerce with 40.3%, POS and QR with 36.9%, and automatic debit with 14%. Interoperable QR reached 4.4% of all credit cards, in quantities. For its part, the one-payment modality represented 88.5% in amounts and 66% in amounts of the total operations.
− Prepaid: in March, 41.6 million payments were made for $0.7 trillion, which represents variations of 18% and -5.6% YoY, in real amounts and amounts respectively.

Transportation

− Prepaid transport cards: about 311.5 million trips were made (-10.5% YoY) through the SUBE card in March, totaling $0.18 trillion (an increase of 8.1% YoY in real terms).
− QR trips: 26.1 million trips were made in April, totaling $29.5 billion, mainly on buses (23.4 million, 89.6% of the total) and on the different subway lines (2.7 million, 10.4%).

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

In the month of analysis, 86.7% of the operations were carried out in pesos, entering the open circulation system (SCA) 69.4 thousand invoices in that currency for $ 1.5 trillion.

Withdrawals

89% of withdrawals were made from ATMs, a channel that registered a year-on-year drop of 35.8% in the number of operations and 14.5% in its total real amount.

− ATMs: in March (latest available data) 42.8 million withdrawals were made from the 17,115 available ATMs for a total of $4.3 billion, with approximately 2,498 being the average number of withdrawals at each ATM in the month. The average withdrawal amount reached $99.6k.
− Extra-bank debit cards: 3.3 million withdrawals for $0.2 billion, with an average amount of $66.4 thousand.
− Extra-bank withdrawals from intra-PSPCP (“closed loop”) payment accounts: 2.3 million withdrawals for $0.15 billion, with an average amount of $66.5 thousand.