Electronic Transactions In Nicaragua Fall 40%

During the second quarter of 2019, the amount of electronic payment services provided was US$5.8 billion, 40% less than in the same period of 2018.

The fall is mainly explained by the lower value traded in the Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT) module, because of the change in the operability of the daily operations of the NCB which, contrary to the second quarter of 2018, were liquidated outside the Nicaraguan Interbank Electronic Payments System (SINPE), reported the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN).

The report of the BCN states that “… The electronic payment instruments available in the country in the second quarter of the year were: cards (debit, credit and pre-paid), transfers, checks and mobile wallets. Debit cards were the instruments with the greatest use in terms of volume (16.7 million transactions during the quarter, which represented 54.8% of transactions made with electronic payment instruments), while intrabank transfers were the most relevant in terms of value (30.3% in the quarter). Although the share of checks has been reduced, it remains representative, with 2.2 million checks settled during the second quarter of 2019.

Finally, the payment infrastructure, in addition to the systems, included automatic teller machines (traditional and intelligent), electronic kiosks, point-of-sale (POS) terminals and non-banking correspondents (own and affiliated), electronic branches, mobile applications, among others. In terms of volume, in the second quarter of the year, the most used devices were POS and automatic teller machines (11.3 and 9.3 million operations). On the other hand, the operations carried out through POS and non-banking correspondents presented an important growth in terms of value (78.1 and 45.6 percent, respectively).”

See “Informe de sistemas y servicios de pago en Nicaragua II Trimestre 2019” (in Spanish).