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Strong growth in electronic payments in 2015

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Over the previous year, consumers made more debit card and iDEAL payments than ever before. With the number of debit card payments rising by almost 10.7% and iDEAL payments by nearly a quarter, people in the Netherlands showed their confidence in electronic payments. The Dutch Payments Association expected strong growth in electronic payments to continue in 2016, as contactless debit card payments and iDEAL payments could also be made by mobile phone.

Blue bar chart with ascending bars and an ascending arrow above it visualizing growth or increase.

Record year for debit card payments

Consumers in the Netherlands made more debit card payments than ever in 2015. The number reached a new record of 3.225 billion (in Dutch), an increase of 10.7% compared with 2014. As in previous years, the strongest growth was in debit card payments between €0 and €10. Their number rose to almost 1.3 billion, accounting for 40% of all debit card payments. Within this segment, payments between €0 and €2.50 increased by 35% compared with 2014.

Chart showing annual debit card payments by transaction amount from 2012 to 2015, with the strongest growth in payments below €10.

Contactless payments

Since their introduction in early 2014, consumers had increasingly made contactless debit card payments. Almost 135 million purchases were paid for contactlessly in 2015 (in Dutch). More than 15 million contactless debit cards and mobile phones with a payment app were in circulation. Consumers could use them to pay contactlessly at 123,000 payment terminals in the Netherlands, more than one in three.

Chart showing the strong growth in contactless debit card payments during 2015.

iDEAL

In 2015, 222 million payments were made with iDEAL (in Dutch), an increase of 23.2% compared with 2014. Since its market launch in late 2005, 917.5 million iDEAL payments had been made in total. Increasing smartphone use made an important contribution to this growth. There was also a particular increase in iDEAL payments outside traditional e-commerce, such as donations to charities and the payment of invoices and fines. Interest in iDEAL also grew because customers in the Netherlands could increasingly use it at foreign online shops. At Dutch online shops, iDEAL use continued to rise both in number and as a share of payments. Research (in Dutch) showed that iDEAL’s e-commerce share had risen to 56% by mid-2015, from 54% in 2014.

Debit card refunds

When consumers returned a purchase to a shop, Retourpinnen (in Dutch) allowed the purchase amount to be refunded directly to their payment account instead of being paid in cash. Since its launch in 2014, more than one million refunds had been made in this way. The average refund amount was €50.88.

Fewer disruptions in payments

The banking sector continuously works to improve the reliability and availability of its systems. This had led to a clear decline in the number of disruptions. Between 2011 and 2015, the number of debit card payments increased from 2.3 billion to 3.2 billion. Over the same period, the number of disruptions fell from 13 in 2011 to one in 2015. The availability of iDEAL (in Dutch) for consumers during prime time, from 07:00 to 01:00, remained high in 2015 at an average of 99.7%, within the 99.5% standard.

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