Amsterdam, 9 January 2007. The number of electronic payment transactions rose again in 2006 as shown by annual figures from Currence, the owner of the PIN and Chipknip products. The number of debit card (PIN) payments grew to 1.451 billion, an increase of 8.8% compared with 2005. The growth increased this year; last year, debit card payments grew by 6.9% compared with 2004. With 164.6 million payments, Chipknip stored-value cards were used 12.1% more often than in the previous year. Currence expects that electronic payments will continue to grow in the future.

Among the different sectors, three clearly have the greatest share of the total number of debit card transactions. Supermarkets handled 34.3% of debit card transactions in 2006 with 497.4 million transactions, followed by petrol stations with 131.1 million debit card transactions (9.0%) and retail/fashion with 117.4 million (8.1%).

As in the previous year, hospitality and recreation was the sector with the greatest increase (33.5%) in the number of debit card transactions with 48.7 million payments. As well as more payment terminals in hospitality and leisure premises, there was also more use of the existing payment terminals: the number of transactions per terminal rose by 18.6% to 194 debit card payments per month.

The street trading sector (markets, door-to-door selling and mail-order companies) closely follows hospitality and recreation with growth of 25% in the number of debit card transactions. The growth in these two sectors was related to the increase in the number of portable payment terminals in street trading which rose by 22.8% in 2006 (all businesses: 3.9%). It is expected that the number of debit card transactions in this sector will increase further in 2007.

The average amount paid by debit card fell further in 2006 to €44.22 (2005: €44.61) despite a sharp increase in petrol prices. The average debit card payment in 2002 was €47. Currence wants to encourage the use of debit cards for smaller amounts.

Most Chipknip payments are made in the catering, vending and parking segments which together represent 72.5% of the number of Chipknip payments. There were 74.5 million Chipknip payments in catering and vending, including canteens and unmanned vending machines in commercial, government, health-care and educational establishments. There were a total of 45 million Chipknip transactions in the parking segment in 2006.

The number of Chipknip top-ups rose by 11.7% to 23 million this year compared with 2005. There are seven Chipknip payments on average for each Chipknip top-up. The average payment in 2006 was €2.68.

Key figures for PIN
Key figures for Chipknip