Payments in Poland: Cards at the heart of growing sophistication

Long-term data from the World Bank shows that Poland has been consistently among the fastest-growing economies in Europe, with a 10-year growth average of 3.7%.

Payments in Poland: Cards at the heart

This growth is reflected in the increasing sophistication of the country’s banking and payment markets, which are embracing Open Banking and new payment types with creative solutions that reflect Poland’s national requirements while complying with international regulations and standards.

International and domestic payment cards have been enthusiastically adopted by Poles for more than 30 years, and continue to play a key role in the country’s payment mix – even as Poles adopt new payment types such as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) and Open Banking payments.

Double-digit growth for cards in the digital era

The average number of payments on each Polish card rose by 14.1% year-on-year since 2019, hitting 231.4 payments per card last year.

Spending per card per year grew by 16.4% each year over the last five years, and last year reached 17,092 Zloty (€4,102). This is a figure comparable to advanced economies like Italy, and higher than the average in Germany.

“Average Polish spend per card measured in Euros matches or exceeds levels seen in Europe’s largest economies.”

Also in 2024, total payments made using cards in Poland exceeded 10 billion for the first time, following average growth of almost 15% per year over the last five years.

When measured in value terms, Poles used their cards to spend a total of 751.3 billion Zloty (€180 billion) last year, a figure that’s risen by more than 17% per year over the last five years.

Cards are popular with Poles for online spending too: e-commerce payments using cards have risen by almost a third (27.4%) every year for the last five years, with the total number of online payments made using cards reaching 316.4 million in 2024.

Rapid change from cash to online payment

The Polish economy has experienced very rapid development over the last 30 years.

This makes for a unique payments landscape, with 42.7% of spending at Point of Sale (POS) still undertaken with cash – even as BLIK, Poland’s wallet-based, online account-to-account payment system reached 16 million users (roughly one in three Poles) last year.

BLIK is used by 78% of online shoppers for lower-value transactions where the security and traceability of card transactions is of less importance.

While there is undoubtedly a generational and regional divide, younger Poles continue to embrace new payment methods, not least BNPL, which is rapidly gaining traction, especially for retail, electronics and fashion purposes.

Account-to-Account (A2A) payments are also gaining ground, with payments via Poland’s Express Elixir system doubling from year to year. This very rapid rate of growth has seen instant payments hit 10% of all retail last year.

What it means for banks

The rapid growth of new and alternative payment methods notwithstanding, it’s clear that cards are currently and will remain central to payments in Poland for the next decade.

This being the case, banks operating in Poland should look to continue their pattern of innovation in the card space.

Banks should also be aware of competitors for their card business from non-bank entities such as online retailers and telecommunications firms, with one late 2024 report from the IDC estimating that three-quarters of transactions could be processed by non-bank entities by 2030.

As a partner helping banks and fintechs to continue their leadership in the card industry, Worldline offers services across the card value chain, from issuing to card management, processing and fraud protection, enabling issuers to manage the entire value chain off one platform.

Worldline’s card issuing services include prepaid cards, debit and credit cards, commercial cards, digital and virtual issuing, plus card tokenisation services as part of a suite of next-level fraud protections which includes industry-leading 3DS security and full compliance with the latest Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) standards.

Worldline supports its client issuing banks with a comprehensive suite of value-added services, including card activation, full compliance with scheme rules, a rich API catalogue, instalment payments and BNPL.

The company’s deep experience across Europe enables issuers to get products to market rapidly, with pricing that’s easy to understand and leverages the economies of scale available to one of Europe’s largest card services companies.

To learn more about partnering with Worldline for card issuing services CLICK HERE