Christmas shock in commerce: for the first time, we can pay with bank cards in fewer places

Although shopping malls remain crowded in the days before Christmas, and many people leave gift shopping until the last minute, the statistics of bank card payments point in a completely different direction. In the history of domestic bank card acceptance, it was the first time that the number of bank card accepting (POS) terminals operating at physical merchants decreased in the third quarter of 2025, points out Péter Gergely, financial expert at BiztosDöntés.hu. A year ago, we could touch our bank cards to 272,591 devices, but at the end of September this year, only 268,925 POS terminals were in operation.

This is all the more remarkable because the number of bank card accepting devices has been continuously increasing every quarter so far. However, the current decline is not unprecedented: the number of physical retail locations has been declining year-on-year since the post-covid recovery in 2023: compared to the peak of 159,270 stores at the end of 2023, at the end of September we were able to pay with bank cards at a total of 154,821 locations, which was almost 3 percent less – 4,449.

All this is happening while the number of bank card purchases continues to show an annual increase of 4–5 percent, and the value shows an increase of 9–10 percent. In other words, the demand for digital payments continues to grow, but this does not explain the decrease in the number of physical acceptance points.

Analyzing the reasons, Péter Gergely says that it is inevitable that a new alternative has arrived on the digital payment market with the instant payment system qvik payment, but according to the expert, this is still the future, as the number of physical qvik acceptance points has only started to increase in recent months – but changes may accelerate here in the future.

The financial expert at BiztosDöntés.hu sees a stronger argument for the decline in the number of POS terminals in that more and more merchants see a fantasy in online sales. During the quarter ending in September, in parallel with the decline in the number of physical acceptance points, the number of online bank card acceptance points increased by 15 percent year-on-year, so today we can pay with a bank card in 65,806 domestic webshops. As a result, nearly 30 percent of the Hungarian bank card accepting merchant network is now online.

The rate of growth is extraordinary: in 2020, the proportion of online accepting merchants was only 16.6 percent. All this clearly indicates the transformation of shopping habits.

According to the analysis by BiztosDöntés.hu, an interesting duality emerges in the spending data. Although only 11 percent of transactions carried out by Hungarian consumers take place on online platforms, more than every fifth forint in terms of the amount spent ends up at an online retailer. This suggests that the average basket value of online purchases is noticeably higher than spending in physical stores – Péter Gergely brings another argument in favor of the existence of online payment.