ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Between 2018 and 2025 the Italian payment system has experienced a profound transformation: digital payments are more than doubled, cards and transfers are increasingly used thanks to increasingly digital and instant channels, the cash maintains a significant role albeit progressively less central. It is what emerges from the data of a study of the Bank of Italy.
In particular, the annual number of transactions with alternative instruments is more than doubled, exceeding 16 billion transactions. The pandemic represented a turning point, accelerating trends in place for a long time. The growth of digital payments was mainly driven by technological innovation in the card sector, which represents the main alternative to cash for number of retail operations. Card transactions accounted for 63% of payments not in cash in 2018.
In 2025 their incidence increased to about 75%. Between 2022 and 2025 the number of paper operations at the POS rose from about 6 to over 10 billion, with an average annual growth of 15.7%.
In 2025 88% of these payments were made in contactless mode; 24% took place through mobile wallets and mobile devices. The transfers remain the second payment tool for number of operations and become increasingly digital and instantaneous.
Between 2018 and 2025 the number of transfers almost doubled, from about 970 million operations to more than 1.8 billion, with an average annual growth of 9.7% In 2025 more than 85% of the transfers was placed via digital channels. The increasing digitization of payments does not result in the disappearance of the cash.
Between 2018 and 2025 the number of cash withdrawals fell from approximately 1.4 billion to just over 1.2 billion. The decline concentrated in 2020 during the pandemic but later the levels were lower than pre-pandemic ones.
Between 2020 and 2025 all macroareas recorded a strong increase in electronic payments.
In the period considered, the Mezzogiorno shows the highest overall growth: +121% of operations per head, against +88% of the Centre and about +90% of the North. The North-South gap is also reduced in the use of transfers.
-Photo IPA Agency-
(ITALPRESS).
