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

Summary

The month of analysis is February 2025, except for withdrawals, credit cards, debit cards and transport cards that the information corresponds to January 2025 and prepaid cards that include the data available as of December 2024.

Money transfers (immediate “push” transfers): reported a growth in amounts of 33% y.o.y.

In pesos: 518.2 million transactions were registered for $ 49.6 billion, which imply year-on-year increases of 33% and 47%, in quantities and amounts respectively. 75.4% had a CVU as their origin and/or destination.

In foreign currency: 1.9 million operations (144.4% YoY) were registered for USD 2,947.1 million (157.9% YoY).

Money inflows (immediate “pull” transfers): reached 36.1 million operations.

36.1 million transfers were made for $ 2.6 billion, -6.6% in amounts and -1.6% in amounts, compared to January.

Interoperable wire transfer payments (PCT): QR reached 58.4 million transactions.

60.7 million operations (61.4% YoY) were carried out for a total of $1,139.5 billion (89.1% YoY).

-QR: 96.2% were initiated with QR codes, representing 58.4 million payments (91.4% YoY) for $1,091.7 billion (138.3% YoY). 49.7% were made by customers who used their demand accounts and 50.3% their payment accounts. Likewise, 27.5% of the merchants credited to demand accounts and 72.5% to payment accounts.
Currently, 73 interoperable digital wallets and 42 PCT acceptors are registered with the BCRA.

-With random keys: 3.8% used a token for their startup; These are 2.3 million operations (-60.8% YoY) for $47.7 billion (-60.8% YoY).

Payment accounts and funds invested through PSPCPs:

In January, out of a total of 54 million accounts, 14.2 million payment accounts were registered with a balance totaling 522.4 billion pesos, while the balances invested in FCI of money reached 4.4 trillion pesos. Both concepts, considered together, represent 6.19% of the total deposits in pesos of the private sector, which was $ 79.8 billion in the aforementioned month. At present, 175 PSPCPs are included in the register.

Direct debit:

11.7 million debits (5.2% YoY) were made for $1.3 trillion (22.6% YoY), with an effectiveness rate that reached 50.7%.

Checks: 74.9% of the amounts cleared correspond to ECHEQ.

-4.4 million checks (physical and electronic) were cleared for a total of $ 14.5 billion. ECHEQ’s share of the total number of cleared persons reached 53.8% in quantities (2.4 million electronic checks) and 79% in amounts ($11.5 billion).

-Rejections for reasons of “insufficient funds”: the ratio with the total compensated reached 0.95% in quantities and 0.7% in amounts.

Cards: the use of debit cards remains above credit cards.

Debit: 230.6 million transactions were made for $5.3 trillion, with variations of -6.9% YoY in amounts and -1.4% YoY in amounts.

Credit: year-on-year variations of 9.2% in amounts and 13.9% in amounts, with 156.7 million payments being made for $7.2 trillion. The channels used are POS and QR with 42%, e-commerce with 32%, followed by automatic debit with 16%.

Prepaid card: 37.5 million payments were made for $ 674.6 billion, which represents increases of 75% and 67.1% y.a., in amounts and amounts respectively.

Prepaid transport cards:

294.5 million trips (-13.9% YoY) were made using the SUBE card, totaling $109.8 billion (165% YoY).

Electronic Invoicing for MSMEs (FCEM):

In the month of analysis, 89.1% of the operations were carried out in pesos, entering the open circulation system (SCA) 105.5 thousand invoices for $ 1 trillion.

Extractions:

90% of withdrawals are made from ATMs.

ATMs: 70.5 million withdrawals were made from the 17,160 ATMs for a total of $3.4 billion, with the average number of withdrawals at each ATM being 4,109. The average withdrawal amount reached $48.8k.

Extrabank debit cards: 4.7 million for $233.8 billion, with an average amount of $49.4 thousand.

Extrabank from intra PSPCP (“closed loop“) payment accounts: 2.9 million for $141.9 billion, with the average amount being $47.7 thousand.