OREANDA-NEWS In the first quarter of 2023, the number of active payment cards in Russia decreased by 7.4 million. This happened for the first time since mid-2020. At the same time, the total number of payment cards issued by banks continues to grow. By the end of January-March, their number exceeded 400 million. This is stated in the statistical bulletin published by the Central Bank (CB).

A total of 11.3 million new cards were issued between January and March. This is slightly lower than the results of the fourth (by 5.8 percent) and first quarters (by 8 percent) of 2022.

The number of used payment cards, on which Russians carried out transactions during the quarter, decreased by 7.39 million since the beginning of the year — to 245.3 million units. The last time the use of cards fell in the second quarter of 2020 amid the introduction of quarantine restrictions.

The reduction in the number of active cards may be due to the fact that many people took the cards of the Mir payment system in the "try" and "reserve" mode, fearing that the cards of international payment systems would stop working, said Roman Prokhorov, head of the Board of the Financial Innovations Association. "We tried, compared cashbacks and returned to the cards of international payment systems, where cashbacks in some cases are still better than on Mir cards," he noted.