Mubasher: Hong Kong continued to make significant strides in adopting payment cards despite the dominance of cash. The total number of card payments is likely to increase to 1 billion in 2020 from 642.0 million in 2015, GlobalData said on Monday.  

The rise is backed by easy electronic payments, solid payment infrastructure as well as the developed contactless payments.

Hong Kong, whose each citizen held more than three cards in 2019, enjoys a highly penetrated payment card market. This was driven by the efforts of the country's government and banks, which succeeded in offering banking services to customers in remote areas while expanding the banking infrastructure through establishing mobile banking branches, new physical bank branches as well as virtual banks.

The Asian country’s payment card market is largely driven by credit and charge cards which accounted for 67.9% of the total card payment value in 2019, GlobalData revealed, adding that in 2023, total card payment value is expected to reach HK$59.6 billion when compared to HK$43.3 billion in 2019.

Commenting on this, banking and payments analyst at GlobalData, Nikhil Reddy, explained, “The pricing benefits such as referral programs, instalment facilities, cashback, and discounts associated with credit and charge cards are some of the key reasons for their preference. In addition, these cards are increasingly preferred for online shopping and for transactions overseas.”  

“Hong Kong’s high banked population, growing preference for contactless technology and the growing e-commerce market will further support the use of payment cards over the next five years,” Reddy concluded.