The National Bank is unsatisfied with a large volume of cash transactions; that is why it promises that Ukrainians’ payments will become noncash.

“National Bank efforts will be based on four main areas of work: a slumping demand in cash, popularization of noncash payments, development of payment infrastructure and changing people’s habits”, NBU Governor Valeria Gontareva said.

“For the previous year, more than half revenues, in particular 58%, the population received in noncash form. However, only 17% were paid by bank transfer. That is why our ambitious aim is to decrease the amount of cash funds in circulation from 14.3% in 2015 to 9.5% from GDP in 2020”, she added.

As of October 1, there were UAH 312.5 billion of cash funds in Ukraine, these funds are in people’s hands, bank cash desks and sale and service companies. The part of business does not want to receive noncash payments from clients.

“We conducted research, which covered the most active young people. More than 90% out of them have payment cards. The major growth is observed in online banking. The share of those, who use cards only for withdrawing cash funds (26% of card owners), is decreasing. The share of cash funds in payments is also decreasing”, Managing Director of GfK Ukraine Alexander Fedorishin. – However, the food products remain the sphere of cash sales, because not everywhere you can pay with card. 31% of business uses only cash for payment and refuses to accept cards, while 34% of business accepts noncash payments”.

The market participants have not observed yet any state’s real actions on encouraging noncash payments. “The industry continues to feel lack of support from the state. And the state does something only for improvement of its image, - Director of the Ukrainian Interbank Payment Systems Member AssociationAlexander Karpov complains, - Out of 1 mln of enterprises, only 20% accept noncash payments”.