Monthly report that analyzes the state and evolution of retail means of payment.

Summary

The month of analysis is October 2025 except for withdrawals, credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards and transport cards that the information corresponds to September 2025 (latest available data).
In October, remittances in pesos (immediate “push” transfers) reported a growth in amounts of 24.7% y.o.y.
In pesos: 690.3 million transactions were registered for $78.8 billion, which imply year-on-year increases of 24.7% and 34.8% in amounts and in real amounts, respectively. 75.2% of the transactions had a CVU as their origin and/or destination.
In foreign currency: 2.7 million operations were registered (47.9% YoY) for USD 4,504.4 million (35% YoY in currency of origin).
Income of money in pesos (immediate transfers “pull”) reached 39.3 million operations in October
39.3 million transfers were made for $3.5 trillion, representing a decrease of -4% in quantities and an increase of 17.1% in real amounts in year-on-year terms.
Interoperable transfer payments (PCT) through QR totaled 77.5 million transactions in pesos
78.8 million PCT operations were carried out (39.6% YoY) in pesos, for a total of $1.6 trillion (49.3% YoY in real terms).

– QR:
98.3% of PCTs were initiated with QR codes, representing 77.5 million payments (48.2% YoY) for $1.5 trillion (61.2% YoY in real terms). 54.5% were made by customers who used their demand accounts (CBU) and 45.5% in their payment accounts (CVU). On the other hand, in stores, 57.9% of transactions were credited to payment accounts, while the remaining 42.1% were channeled to demand accounts.

Currently, 83 interoperable digital wallets and 57 PCT acceptors are registered with the BCRA.

– With random keys:

1.7% used a token for the start of PCTs; These are 1.3 million operations (-68.5% YoY) for $38.1 billion (-62% YoY in real terms).

Payment accounts and funds invested through PSPCPs
In September, out of a total of 63.8 million payment accounts, 14.9 million had a balance totaling $0.7 trillion pesos. For its part, the balances invested in FCI of money reached $ 5.4 trillion in the same month. Considered together, both concepts represented 6.1% of the total deposits in pesos of the private sector. A total of 200 PSPCPs are currently included in the Register of Payment Service Providers.

Direct
debitIn October, 11.8 million direct debits were made (-5.3% YoY) for a total of $1.7 trillion (growth of 2% YoY in real terms). The effectiveness rate reached 43.5%.

Checks. 81.9% of the amounts cleared in October corresponded to ECHEQ
5.5 million checks (physical and electronic) were cleared for a total of $21.6 billion. ECHEQ’s share of the total number of cleared persons reached 58.9% in quantities (3.2 million electronic checks) and 81.9% in amounts ($17.7 billion).
Rejections for reasons of “insufficient funds”: the ratio to the total compensated reached 2% in quantities and 1.5% in amounts.

Cards. Credit card usage surpassed debit cards
Debit: 168 million transactions were made for $4.4 trillion in September (latest available data), with variations of -15.2% YoY in amounts and -13.9% YoY in real amounts.
Credit: year-on-year increases of 7.9% in amounts and 0.6% in real amounts were observed, making 175.4 million payments for $8.9 trillion. The most used channels were POS and QR which represented 38.1% of the total amount, e-commerce with 38% and automatic debit with 14.2%. Interoperable QR reached 4.4% of all credit cards. For its part, the one-payment modality represented 88.5% in amounts and 66.2% in amounts of the total credit card operations.
Prepaid card: 39.2 million payments were made for $ 0.63 trillion, which represents falls of -7.2% and -22.8% y.a., in real amounts and amounts respectively.

Transportation
Prepaid transport cards: 388.4 million trips were made (-1.6% YoY) through the SUBE card in September, totaling $0.17 trillion (growth of 6.5% YoY in real terms).
Trips with QR 13.7 million trips were made in October, totaling $12.7 billion.

Electronic Invoicing for MSMEs (FCEM)
In the month under analysis, 86.2% of the operations were carried out in pesos, with 73.8 thousand invoices entering the open circulation system (SCA) for $ 1.4 trillion.

Extractions
89% of withdrawals were made from ATMs.
ATMs: in September (latest available data) 48.5 million withdrawals were made from the 17,536 available ATMs for a total of $ 3.8 billion, with approximately 2,765 being the average number of withdrawals at each ATM in the month. The average withdrawal amount reached $78.5 thousand.
Extrabank withdrawals with debit card: 3.6 million withdrawals for $0.2 billion, with an average amount of $59.6 thousand.
Extrabank withdrawals from intra-PSPCP (“closed loop”) payment accounts: 2.2 million withdrawals for $0.1 billion, with an average amount of $55.1 thousand.