The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBBH), published today, on March 2020, two reports: “Cards Operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2019” and “Payment Systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2019”.
A total of 23 commercial banks offer card business services, the structure of the brands on offer has not changed compared to the previous year – MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Diners – while only three banks offer the only one domestic card – Bamcard.
During 2019, there was a decrease in the total number of active cards by 14,742 cards and now we have a total of 2,138,604 active cards. There was a decrease in the number of debit and credit cards in the total structure of active cards, but the number of deferred payment cards increased.
The trend of increasing number and value of card transactions continues. In 2019, card transactions in the amount of 11,166,890,301 BAM were made, of which the majority (70%) were made by withdrawing money, while 29% of transactions were made through POS, and 1% of payments were made through the Internet.
There was a slight decrease in the value of an individual transaction, and at the same time an increase in the number of transactions, which indicates that BH citizens are increasingly adopting cashless payment as their preferred payment method. Accordingly, there has been an increase in the average annual turnover per card of 445 BAM compared to 2018, now amounting to 5,222 BAM.
This increase is certainly due to the continued work of commercial banks to expand the cashless payment infrastructure, and in 2019, the number of ATMs and POS devices increased by 1,469. In addition to the usual structure of devices available for card payment, as of this year, there are 33 ATMs on the BH market that, among other services, also provide clients to pay invoices.
In 2019, holders of cards issued in Bosnia and Herzegovina executed transactions in the amount of 595,059,942 BAM on ATM and POS devices of foreign banks, while with the cards issued abroad, the realized value of transactions was 2,542,040,656 BAM on BH banks’ ATM and POS devices, in 2019.
In 2019, electronic banking services were offered by 22 banks in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is a trend of increasing the number of clients using these services by 14.6% compared to the previous year. In terms of service structure, 57% of e-banking is mobile banking, while 43% is internet banking.
When deciding on the type of service, legal entities generally (96%) opt for internet banking, while two thirds of citizens opted for mobile banking. During the year, a total of 24.180.079 transactions were performed in the total amount of KM 91.890.953.437.
The report on payment systems in BH for 2019 indicates a continuous trend of increasing the number and value of transactions that are executed through the CBBH payment systems, gyro clearing and RTGS. Through the payment system of gyro clearing 42,496,286 transactions were realized in 2019 (41,266,770 in 2018), while through RTGS, 1,105,320 transactions were carried out in 2019 (1,067,256 in 2018).
The value of transactions performed through the giro clearing payment system in 2019 was 18,220,558,843 BAM (in 2018 it was KM 17,276,660,857), while the value of transactions performed through the RTGS payment system in 2019 was 104,825,511,544 BAM (in 2018, it was 85,393,044,051 BAM). The share of the number of RTGS transactions in the total transactions in 2019 was 2.54%, while the share in the value was 85.19%. The share of giro clearing transactions in the number of the total transactions was 97.46%, and in the value it was 14.81%.
In 2019, the share of the first ten banks in the payment system in the number of transactions was 73.09% and 78.94% in the value of transactions.
There was the total of 11,931 orders in the value of € 265,096,190 through the clearing system for international payments with Serbia in 2019. The total of six banks from BH participated in the system.
Starting from June 03, 2019, the Central Bank of BH started the production operation of the updated giro clearing system (SEPA ACH). By this upgrade, the giro clearing system has been adjusted with the SEPA rules and a step has been made in preparing the integration of the payment systems in BH with the payment systems in the EU.
