New PIN records in 2011

8 February 2012

Card payments

At just over 2.285 billion, the number of debit card transactions set another record in the economically challenging year of 2011. This is according to Currence’s annual figures.

The number of debit card payments rose by 6.1% compared with 2010. This growth was particularly evident in the supermarket sector, the hospitality industry and petrol stations.
The strongest growth was seen in the €0 to €10 value segment. The number of debit card payments in this category rose by over 95 million (16.7%) last year to a total of nearly 668 million, accounting for over 29% of all debit card transactions.

Debit card payments grew most strongly in supermarkets. According to research firm GfK, the supermarket sector still saw modest turnover growth of 2.6 per cent, whilst Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported that elsewhere in the retail sector, volumes contracted and turnover stagnated in 2011. In the supermarket sector, by contrast, the number of debit card payments rose by 9.4% to over 805 million. Supermarkets contribute more significantly to the growth in debit card payments than other sectors. Of all debit card transactions, 35.2% take place in supermarkets.

The average amount paid by debit card fell by almost 4 per cent in 2011 to €36.11, compared with €37.58 the previous year. This is because consumers are increasingly making small debit card payments.

The Dutch ‘PIN’ brand ceased to exist at the end of last year. The dismantling of the infrastructure will be completed in the course of this year. This marks the end of a twenty-year period during which the PIN brand drove the strong growth of electronic payments in the Netherlands. It took until 2002 to reach the milestone of 1 billion PIN transactions per year. It then took a further five years for this figure to rise to 1.5 billion per year. Growth then accelerated, and within three years the 2 billion transactions per year mark was reached. The introduction of EMV (the new debit card system) went exceptionally smoothly. Just over 10 months after Minister Jan Kees de Jager gave the go-ahead for the new debit card system on 2 March last year, the Netherlands switched to the EMV chip.