The penetration of plastic money in everyday transactions has continued during the first quarter of 2019, but at a considerably lower rate than last year, as the presence of the card terminals is just for appearances for a significant number of professionals, ekathimerini.com reports.
A quarter of professionals forced by law to install a credit and debit card terminal have not recorded a single transaction over the last couple of years, according to numbers presented on Thursday by the commercial director at Cardlink, Antigonos Papadopoulos, at the 6th Digital Forum organized in Athens by Ethos Media.
The event, which showed the latest trends in online payments, heard that 25 percent of the points of sale (PoS) installed in 2017 and 2018 remain inactive. That amounts to nearly 175,000 of the 700,000 terminals installed.
At the same time, card use recorded signs of fatigue, as in the first quarter of the year the annual value growth of electronic transactions conducted via Greek bank cards (excluding those by tourists) grew by 14 percent, against 17 percent growth in the same period of 2018 and 40 percent in 2017. Papadopoulos said this fatigue is also due to the sluggish rise in gross domestic product.
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