Investment Gold Worth Nearly BGN 500,000 Bought via Paysera Bulgaria in January-June

Jerusalem, 26 July, 2022 (TPS) -- SOFIA 26.07.2022 (BTA)
In the first half of 2022, Bulgarians purchased gold worth BGN 491,000 via Paysera Bulgaria, an online payment services platform for businesses and individuals, up by 65% from a year earlier. Investment gold is one of the preferred methods of preserving purchasing power, as supported by data for the reference period, the company said.

Likewise, the number of the platform’s users trading in precious metals increased by nearly 20% year on year.

In the first half of 2022, the volume of digital payments via the platform grew by 43.6% year on year. During that period, Bulgarian customers made over 104,000 payments more in 15 different currencies, worth a total of BGN 533.9 million.

Nearly two thirds of the transactions were international transfers. The top five most used currencies are the Bulgarian lev, the euro, the US dollar, the British pound, and the Romanian leu. The most significant increase in volume from the first half of 2021 was registered for US dollars and British pounds, 74% and 69% respectively.

Intercompany payments accounted for almost 65% of payments through the platform, followed by wages and salaries, with fees for training and courses, mostly abroad, coming third. Payments to the exchequer and investments gained popularity this year and accounted for 1.8% and 7% respectively.

The volume of transactions made by Bulgarian customers was a record high for the platform since its launch in Bulgaria in 2016. This is a sign of the pace of digitization in the financial sector, although many companies are still recovering from the pandemic or are struggling in the current geopolitical environment, said Paysera Bulgaria CEO Martin Bogdanov.

In trade, payment data are polarized. In spite of a major surge in online sales, 60% of consumers shopping online choose to pay cash on delivery, according to the Bulgarian E-commerce Association’s report for 2020. Cash on delivery dominated online trading in 2019 as well, but its share was 10% larger – a sign that payments are going digital at a moderate pace.

On the other hand, cashless payments in retail are increasing, largely encouraged by store owners to prevent the spread of COVID. The latest data from the Bulgarian National Bank show that in the first half of 2021 alone, the number of card payments at physical POS terminals exceeded 109.3 million, over 40% more than five years earlier. In the same period, the number of POS terminals in Bulgaria increased at the expense of cash machines, which saw a decline as interest in cash decreased. The number of cash machines in this country dropped steadily from 5,751 in 2016 to 5,340 in 2021. In contrast, POS terminals increased by 25% from 86,663 in 2016 to 108,694 in mid-2021.

Paysera’s experts expect interest in innovative payment solutions to grow even more in the future. For instance, open banking is considered a revolution in the world of finance. It opens up the EU payments market to non-banks and enables clients to pay directly from their bank accounts when shopping online without using a card or an intermediary.