According to data released by the European Central Bank (ECB), the highest percentage of card payments is in Portugal, with about 71%, according to the 2018 ECB Payment Statistics report, released today.

In the annex with the report, there is an exact percentage of payments made by card - 70.5%, which is an increase of 2.2 percentage points compared to 2017.

For other types of transactions, credit payments accounted for 11.9% of the total in 2018, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points compared to 2017.

Direct debits reached 9.7% of total payments in 2018, which was 1.4 percentage points less than in 2017.

In terms of e-money payments, they reached a total of 2.9% in 2018, an increase of 0.2 percentage points compared to 2017.

Cheque payments represented 1.9% of the total in 2018, which was 0.4 percentage points less than in 2017.

In the euro area, non-cash payments increased by 7.9% to 90.7 billion in 2018 compared to 2017.

Of these, 46% were card payments, with 23% of the total transfer payments and 23% for direct debits.

A total of 554 million bank cards were issued in 2018, representing a ratio of 1.6 cards per inhabitant of the eurozone (341 million inhabitants).

On average, people in the eurozone spent €44 per card transaction, as the number of transactions increased by 13% to 41.4 billion, totalling 1.8 billion euros.

The ECB's report also showed that the total number of ATMs in the eurozone fell by 0.3% to 300,000, representing close to one machine per 1,126 people.

Portugal is also, together with Austria, in the leadership of countries that have more automatic machines regarding the population.