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Payment Organization
BORICA-Bankservice is the Bulgarian interbank organization and card authorization centre.
Domestic Card Brand
BORICA is a domestic debit card; most cards are co-badged Maestro.
Bcard is the new national card scheme launched in July 2017.
TransCard are private label cards, also co-badged Mastercard.
Market Structure
Most payments are made with cash and most electronic payments are credit transfers. Most bank cards are debit cards, used for cash withdrawals.
Rapid growth of card use. Payments on cards have grown 233.3% from 2011, while the value increased by 184.7%. However, there were just 13.1 card payments per capita in 2016, the lowest in Europe.
The number of cards issued rose from 106,000 in 1998 to 8.1 million in 2008, when penetration per capita exceeded 1.0 for the first time. In 2016, cards issued amounted to 7.8 million.
There is one JCB card issuer in Bulgaria.
The banking sector has been privatized and is 76.5% foreign-controlled.
Three of the top ten banks are owned by Greek bank groups.
Notable Market Trends
Contactless rollout; Bcard; HCE NFC pilots, biometric card pilot.
Statistical Key Figures for 2016 provided in this profile:
• UPDATED: tables with card business data 2012-2016; growth rates: Y-o-Y, CAGR
• Population, Cards per Capita, Card Value per Capita
• Debit Cards, Credit/Delayed Debit Cards, Total Cards
• Card payments by number and by value, ATV per card, payments per card/year
• ATMs, POS terminals, ATMs/POS terminals per 1 million capita
• ATM withdrawals by number/by value, ATV per withdrawal, TXs per ATM/month
• POS payments by number/by value, ATV per POS payment, TXs per POS/month
• Internet Use, e-payment mix, B2C e-Commerce by value and growth rate
• Issued Card brands by individual major issuer bank
• Accepted card brands by individual major acquirer
• Drill down into the debit card use and credit cards use details
Product information
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Version
1.0.0 last updated 2nd December 2017
