The share of non-cash trade turnover in Russia reached 54.1 percent last year. This became a historical record, according to a study by the SberIndex laboratory and the OFD Platform IT company.
Due to the pandemic, buyers prefer to avoid unnecessary contact with contaminated surfaces, which include paper money, the report said. In 18 regions, the share of non-cash turnover exceeded 60 percent in the fourth quarter. The record was set by the Nenets Autonomous Okrug with an indicator of 70 percent. The top three also include the Republic of Karelia (64.9 percent) and the Murmansk region (64.1 percent).
Sberbank called an “outstanding breakthrough” that more than half (53.1 percent) of payments in convenience stores turned out to be non-cash in the last quarter of last year. Restaurants (76.6 percent) were the leaders in the share of such payments. At the same time, the volume of paper money in circulation in the country is also growing. However, legal entities have become a driver of demand for cache.
Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, the popularity of cashless payments has grown worldwide. Scientists at the University of Chicago believe that this trend is fraught with danger: as the use of non-cash payments has increased, so has spending on junk food.