Use of POS is rapidly growing in Greece in the last two years, following the imposition of capital controls in the market and the introduction of recent legislative moves on plastic money.
Cardlink, a POS manufacturer, said a total of 60,000 new POS were added in the market in the last four months, totaling more than 360,000, from around 305,000 at the end of 2016. Cardlink expects the number of POS to surpass 420,000 by the end of the year. The number of POS was less than
150,000 two years ago. Turnover through the use of POS totaled 19 billion euros in 2016 and 5.5 billion in the first four months of 2017.
Cardlink said, however, that despite an increase in the number of POS and large increase in the use of debit cards, the average value of transactions eased to 61 euros in April 2017 from 100 euros in 2013 (credit cards) and to 41 euros in April from 60 euros in 2013 (debit cards).
Contactless payments are also rapidly gaining market share to 22 pct in April 2017 from 0.4 pct in 2014, although the average value of transactions fell to 24 euros in April from 46 euros in 2014.
