BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 5. The share of cash withdrawals in overall payment card operations keeps decreasing in Kazakhstan, Trend reports via the Kazakh ranking agency.
According to the agency, this figure totaled 14.8 percent from January through February against 19.3 percent in the same period last year, whereas in 2021 this rate stood at 26 percent, in 2020 - 41.3 percent and in 2019 - 65.4 percent.
Meanwhile, the amount of funds cashed out from cards from January through February of this year reached 3.1 trillion Kazakh tenge ($6.9 billion), which is 9 percent higher compared to the same period of the previous year.
Among the regions of Kazakhstan, the largest amount of cash withdrawals from payment cards traditionally fell Almaty: 823.6 billion Kazakh tenge ($1.8 billion) from January through February 2023.
Almaty is followed by Astana (345 billion Kazakh tenge or $778.3 million), Karaganda and Ulytau regions (227.8 billion Kazakh tenge or $513.9 million), as well as Shymkent (191.9 billion Kazakh tenge or $432.9 million).
In terms of the method used to withdraw cash, a significant share traditionally belonged to ATMs, which accounted for 2.9 trillion Kazakh tenge ($6.5 billion) from January through February 2023 - a 14.3 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, POS terminals amounted to 278.9 billion Kazakh tenge ($629.2 million) - a 26.2 percent percent decrease from the previous year.