Table of contents
Payments at points-of-sale
The Dutch mostly pay with debit cards from Maestro or V PAY. These figures are about payments at points-of-sale with debit cards, credit cards and cash, including at town hall tellers, busses and trams and vending machines.
Chip-and-pin vs. contactless
By the end of 2020 the share of contactless payments with debit cards and credit cards had increased to 85%.
By december 2020, about 15% of all contactless payments were made with smartphones and wearables (with built-in NFC-chip). They are expected to become more common in the future.
Reverse card payments
Reverse debit card payments (refunds) are offered by Dutch shops that reimburse customers when they return recently made purchases. They are particularly popular in clothing and furniture stores. The average amount for a reverse debit card payment in 2020 was €45.
Person-to-person payments
Consumers make well over 500 million person-to-person payments per year, with cash, electronically with credit transfers and payment requests and with various kinds of gift cards. The convenience of payment requests with mobile apps has boosted the number of electronic person-to-person payments, at the expense of mutual cash payments.
Leading online payment methods
We can show reliable online transaction figures for iDEAL and credit cards only. These figures cover every kind of online payment by Dutch residents, at domestic and foreign web shops, companies and institutions. For example, they include online payments for public services or online payments between friends and relatives.
Please note: Several other online payment methods are not shown in this diagram because they could not provide the required figures for Dutch residents.
E-Commerce payments by device
The source of these figures is the Home Shopping Payment Monitor from Thuiswinkel.org, the Dutch trade organisation for online merchants. They represent online payments by Dutch consumers at online merchants in the Netherlands and abroad. Online payments outside of e-commerce, such as payments between friends or for traffic violations, are not included.
Giro-based payments
The figures for domestic giro-based payments – mostly credit transfers and direct debits – are from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB, the Dutch national bank). They include rapidly declining paper based payment requests. Notably, the figures about Acceptgiro payment requests only cover paper forms that were submitted by payers to their banks. The vast majority of Acceptgiro payment requests (over 90%) are copied to online banking and become regular digital credit transfers. In the end, these Acceptgiro forms are thrown out as paper waste.
Currently, over 30 million inter-bank Instant Payments are processed per month.
Mobile banking and internet banking
Almost nine in ten Dutch bank customers use mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) or internet banking (on desktops and laptops) for banking services. In 2018 the use of mobile devices for banking services surpassed the use of internet banking.
More figures on online banking transactions by DNB…
E-Mandates
The Dutch banks launched the possibility to issue e-mandates through online banking in 2015. As a single mandate allows for multiple recurring direct debit payments over many years, the number of issued mandates per year is quite modest in comparison with the number of direct debits per year.
Bank switching service
These figures show the number of yearly applicants for the Dutch Bank Switching Service, business and private applicants alike. The Bank Switching Service allows bank customers to easily switch banks for payment services. Direct debits and account credits for the old account are automatically forwarded to the new account, for 13 months. The service also assists customers to inform creditors and debtors about the new account number.
Availability of payment chains
| Availibility | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debit card payments | 99.88% | 99.88% | 99.89% | 99.89% | 99.89% |
| Mobile banking | 99.77% | 99.83% | 99.75% | 99.81% | 99.83% |
| Internet banking | 99.79% | 99.83% | 99.72% | 99.78% | 99.88% |
The Dutch Payments Association monitors the availability of the Dutch payment system. DNB, the Dutch national bank, sets requirements for the overal availabilty of chip-and-pin and contactless. The required availability for 2019 was set at 99.88%.
The Payments Association also reports the availibility of internet banking (via websites) and mobile banking (with apps) for every quarter on its website.
There are no formal requirements for internet banking or mobile banking but Dutch law dictates that online banking services may not be interrupted for more than two hours at a time.
The availibility of iDEAL, the leading Dutch online payment method, is monitored by Currence. Currence tracks the average monthly availability of iDEAL as well as the real-time availability, hour by hour, going back for one week.
Recent payment fraud
These charts show the distribution of damages for the most important fraud categories in payment services from banks.
Long term payment fraud
This line chart shows the trend for fraud with bank payment services, for total fraud and for the biggest losses in giro-based payments (with online banking), for debit cards (with stolen cards) and for credit cards (with online payments).
Cash withdrawals
Cash withdrawals and payments are in decline. Withdrawals at counters have become very rare and nonetheless ATM-withdrawals are also in decline. The Dutch increasingly pay with debit cards. Still, the availability and accessibility of cash remains very good. Over 99.5 percent of Dutch residents live within 5 km of a cash dispense facility.
Bank offices, ATMs and POS terminals
The shift from cash to electronic payments is also apparent from the gradual decrease in the number of bank offices and ATMs and rapid increase of the number of payment terminals at points-of-sale.
Payment instruments
The number of payment accounts and payment cards in circulation has been quite stable in recent years because virtually all Dutch resident have a payment account with a debit card by the time they reach adulthood.
