With private consumption improving last year, the increase in average daily card spending widened again for the first time in three years.
According to the 2025 domestic payment and settlement trends released by the Bank of Korea on the 30th, the average daily spending on payment cards (credit, debit, and prepaid) last year was 3.596 trillion won, up 4.7% from a year earlier.
The card spending growth rate slowed for two consecutive years due to weak domestic demand, from 12.7% in 2022 to 6.1% in 2023 and 4.1% in 2024. However, as private consumption improved last year, the increase widened again.
Credit card spending was 2.859 trillion won, up 4.6% from the same period a year earlier. Debit card spending rose 4.3% to 725 billion won, and prepaid card spending jumped 77.7% to 12 billion won.
A Bank of Korea (BOK) official said, "As private consumption recovered, usage increased across credit, debit, and prepaid cards."
Of total payments, the amount made using mobile devices averaged 1.668 trillion won per day. That was up 7.3% from a year earlier. The Bank of Korea (BOK) said the increase was driven by card-based easy payment services, which accounted for 51.9% of the total. In contrast, payments made with physical cards fell 0.4% to 1.405 trillion won.
Last year, the use of bills and checks averaged 17.7 trillion won per day, up 10.7% from 16 trillion won a year earlier. Account transfers through the small-value payment network rose 6.1% over the same period to 105.3 trillion won.