Use of e-money cards in Malta, such as Revolut, has reached an all-time high with the overall number of such cards issued exceeding traditional credit and debit cards banks.

It transpires that last year 2.13 million payment cards were issued in Malta, of which 1.2 million had an e-money function – pre-paid cards which can be either re-loadable from an e-money account or non-reloadable like gift cards.  

This trend has emerged from a Central Bank of Malta study which analysed point-of-sale transactions over the five-year period between 2017 and 2021. During the period under review there was a drop in transactions and cards issued at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, but following this blip the upward trend resumed.

E-money cards, debit, credit cards

In 2021 cards with an e-money function accounted for 56.6% of the total number of payment cards issued in Malta, whilst debit cards accounted for 35.4%. Furthermore, the number of cards with a credit function decreased until 2020, falling from 181,720 in 2017 to 167,569, with the highest decrease of 10,149 recorded during 2020. In 2021, the number of credit cards in issuance rose by 1.7%, reaching 170,455 by the end of the year. Similarly, cards with a debit function initially decreased significantly, before increasing by 7.5% in 2020 and by a further 11.0% during 2021. By the end of that year there were 753,809 debit cards in use.

As regards cards issued with an e-money function (prepaid cards), these decreased constantly from 783,339 in 2017 to 657,959 in 2020, before registering a sharp increase of 83.5% with 1.2 million prepaid cards issued during 2021.

Payments affected at POS terminals

The number of POS terminals located in Malta increased from 15,761 in 2017 to 17,968 in 2021, resulting in a 14% cumulative increase in five years. 2021 also happened to register the strongest yearly increase of 8.7%, or 1,430 physical terminals

The volume and value of such card payment transactions have been increasing consistently, registering an increase of 85.1% in volume terms, from 16.4 million transactions in 2017 up to 30.4 million in 2021. The increase in value, although lower, was still very strong, up by 57.1% from €913.5 million in 2017 to €1.4 billion in 2021.

On the other hand, the average value per POS transaction decreased from €56 in 2017 to €47 per transaction in 2021, meaning that consumers, on average, utilised their payment card to settle lower value payments at physical POS terminals.

The corresponding values follow the same trend, registering a considerable increase of 37.8%, from an average of €57,957 per terminal in 2017 to €79,874 per terminal in 2021. Analysing this data, we can conclude that notwithstanding the fact that the number of physical POS terminals are increasing, the surge in the volume and value of POS payment transactions effected with locally-issued cards was more significant, resulting in consistent increases in the number of transactions per terminal along the years.

Online payments

Data reported between 2017 and 2021 show that online payment transactions are on the increase, with a substantial rise of 152.6% (from 9.5 million in 2017 to 23.9 million in 2021). Likewise, though weaker, the value of such transactions also rose significantly. This rose by 124.6%, from €701.9 million in 2017 to €1,576.5 million in 2021. Last year, the volume of online payment transactions registered an increase of 23.9% over 2020, while the corresponding value recorded an increase of 30.7%. The share of online transactions with cards issued by local PSPs in the private consumption of residents in Malta and abroad almost doubled since 2017, rising from 13.3% to 26.0%