The adoption of virtual wallets in Argentina reached a new record of users (9.9 million) in May, 18.4% more than in April and 193.5% above the same month last year. In this way, they almost double those who operate through web channels, according to the latest report of Use of Electronic Money of the Link Network based on data from 37 million cards. In total, the use of electronic money in Link exceeded $2 trillion in May 2022, a nominal increase of 6.7% in May and 91.7% in the last twelve months, significantly above the inflation of those periods.
“May closed with almost 2 users of electronic wallets for each one that used the WEB, and consolidated a relationship of just over 1.2 times in number of total and also monetary transactions that totaled an unprecedented amount of $ 0.3 billion ($ 297,654 million),” said the Link report, while detailing that the amount of operations carried out with electronic wallets grew 7.3 times in the last year.
In this framework, the momentum in the use of electronic money was underpinned by the growth of non-face-to-face transactions, which totaled 127.9 million operations, the second maximum mark of the series and very close to the peak recorded in December 2021 with 129.1 million. It also posted a peak mark of 361.2 million total transactions, which were up 155.4% compared to a year ago.” Compared to May 2021, the sustained growth of transactions through POS purchases was also highlighted, with a jump of 31.4%, to a new maximum mark of 68.6 million operations, “said Red Link.
Among the most carried out operations were the recharge of cell phones (+186% a.i.) with a record of just over 3 million and 1.2 million users; as well as the recharge of transport, which multiplied by 4.1 in transactions and 3.6 in customers. In the accumulated of the first five months of 2022, the index of use of electronic money grew in real terms 14.4% compared to the same stretch of the previous year, “a much higher rate than that experienced by economic activity in general,” the report said.
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