In 2020, Bancontact processed over *** percent more payment transactions in Belgium. Bancontact is a payment scheme local to Belgium and is the market leader when it comes to electronic payment methods. It uses debit cards from over ** Belgian banks, and can be used for both in-store card transactions as well as online payments.

Digital payments in Belgium in 2018 have increasingly been done with Bancontact and PayPal. Up until the beginning of 2017, credit cards were the most popular payment method for e-commerce purchases. In 2018, however, 68 percent of Belgian online shoppers said they used the domestic payment scheme Bancontact. This is supported by a 2018 e-commerce survey in Belgium, in which 30 percent or respondents said they paid online with their debit card, using Bancontact, or with its app.

Bancontact: Belgium’s most important payment brand

Bancontact, until 2016 called Mister Cash, is a payment scheme that only exists in Belgium and uses debit cards from the country’s banks (such as the big banks BNP Paribas Fortis, Belfius and KBC) to pay for goods purchased either online or in a brick-and-mortar store. Because of this structure, the payment card scheme reached the highest market share for both e-commerce and POS in both 2016 and 2017 in the country, ahead of Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

Credit cards and PayPal seem to have more specific uses

Both credit cards and PayPal were still popular options for Belgian consumers, but for different reasons. On average, credit card purchases tended to be more expensive than a purchase done via Bancontact. For PayPal, the source gives no explanation for its increasing use. What could play a part, however, is that online shoppers from Belgium buy more from foreign e-commerce retailers.

Bancontact payment cards were significantly more used for POS and e-commerce than Visa or Mastercard in Belgium. In 2023, Bancontact held ** percent of the market share of payment card schemes in Belgium. It is a payment scheme from Brussels that, like PayPal, is responsible for the processing of electronic payments, but specifically targets the Belgian market. All issued debit cards in the country work with this scheme, making it one of the leading payment methods for online purchases in Belgium.

Based on the monthly number of daily active users (DAU) throughout 2018, Bancontact was Belgium’s most popular mobile payment app. Bancontact is a payment scheme local to Belgium and processed nearly 1.5 billion transactions in 2018. It uses debit cards from over 20 Belgian banks, and can be used for both in-store card transactions as well as online payments. When it comes to performing mobile payments, most banks in Belgian recommended their customers to use the Bancontact app as domestic online banking apps do not have a payment option!

Two can play that game: Payconiq by Bancontact

Payconiq, another popular mobile payment app in Belgium, originally comes from Luxembourg and is a mobile money transfer app that allows people to pay their friends, to pay their bills or to pay on a website. ING Belgium introduced the smartphone app in 2015, with KBC and Belfius joining in 2017. More than 2.5 million transactions were processed by the P2P app in 2018. In the summer of 2018, Payconiq Belgium merged with the above mentioned payment system Bancontact into Bancontact Payconiq Company. The same happened to the two separate apps in 2019: they merged into one app called "Payconiq by Bancontact". This merger is not yet reflected in this statistic.

How about digital wallets in Belgium?

Belgium has support for both Google Pay (since 2017) and Apple Pay (since November 2018, exclusively for customers of BNP Paribas Fortis and its daughters). Domestic sources claimed in early 2019 that Apple's mobile payment system was more popular: nearly 150,000 Belgians connected one or more payment cards to Apple Pay in December 2018, whereas Google Pay had around 35,000 users. Contactless payments in general, however, accounted for only about four percent of total payments in Belgium in 2018. PayPal ranked among the most used payment methods for online shopping in the country, although it was still behind Bancontact.

Is MasterCard or VISA the most used payment card in Belgium? According to the number of processed payment transactions, neither is. In 2020, approximately *** billion transactions were made using Bancontact. This payment scheme, which only exists in Belgium and uses debit cards from the country’s banks (such as the big banks BNP Paribas Fortis, Belfius and KBC) to pay for goods purchased either online or in a brick-and-mortar store, made up the majority of all processed payment transactions in the country. Bancontact also ranked as the country’s most used digital payment method in 2019.

Credit cards lead the way online…

Compared to the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region, Belgian customers made relatively more use of credit cards for e-commerce payments. A potential explanation for this could be that Belgian customers are more likely to buy something online from outside their country than other European customers. Cross-border purchases sometimes might require credit card payments, although some Dutch webshops (such as Bol.com and Coolblue) have started to add the Bancontact payment option to make their platforms more attractive for a Belgian audience.

… with debit cards being popular at retail points of sale.

In 2017, there were around **** million payment cards issued with a debit function in Belgium. This number is a decline in comparison to the previous year, for reasons that were not mentioned. These payments, however, were not likely to be contactless: in 2018, only **** percent of POS payment transactions in Belgium were contactless. This was considerably less than the market shares of contactless payments in other European countries and the combined European average of ** percent.

Which payment methods are the most popular for online shopping in Belgium? In 2019, ** percent of Belgian consumers used a debit card for their e-commerce purchases. This was done by using something called Bancontact (formerly known Bancontact/Mister Cash, since 2018 Payconiq by Bancontact). Credit cards, on the other hand, were used less often from year to year. Bancontact’s popularity was also reflected in processed payment transactions: approximately **** billion transactions were made using this payment scheme, whereas VISA/Mastercard and Maestro reached *** million transactions altogether.

What is Bancontact exactly?

Bancontact is a Belgium-only payment scheme and the country’s market leader when it comes to electronic payment methods. It can be found on debit cards from domestic banks such as BNP Paribas Fortis, Belfius and KBC. In a way, Bancontact is comparable to PayPal in that it is responsible for processing electronic payments for goods purchased online. As the payment scheme is on a debit card, however, it is also responsible for processing purchases in a brick-and-mortar store.

Does this mean that Belgians do not use credit cards for e-commerce?

In 2017, Belgian consumers made relatively more use of credit cards for e-commerce payments than their counterparts in the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). This is probably because Belgians tend to buy products online from outside their country. The leading online retailers of the country, for example, consisted in 2016 of companies from either the Netherlands (Coolblue and Bol.com), Germany (Zalando and Mediamarkt) and France (Vente-Exlusive.com/Veepee). The Colruyt Group (the company behind Belgium’s discount supermarket chain Colruyt) was the first domestic entry in the ranking in seventh place. Amazon topped this list but saw web visits from Belgium go to either one of three platforms: their French platform, .COM platform or German platform.

In 2020, P2P payment app Payconiq processed over 100 percent more payment transactions in Belgium than in the previous year. Payconiq originally comes from Luxembourg and is a mobile money transfer app that allows people to pay their friends, to pay their bills or to pay on a website. ING Belgium introduced the smartphone app in 2015, with Belgian banks KBC Bank and Belfius joining in 2017. In 2018, Payconiq Belgium merged with Belgian payment system Bancontact into Bancontact Payconiq Company. The same happened to the two separate apps: they merged into one app called "Payconiq by Bancontact".

How many POS terminals are there in Belgium? In 2023, there were approximately 263,000 payment devices located in Belgium, a decrease of around 60,000 from the previous year. By comparison, the number of active POS terminals in the Netherlands increased by roughly three percent in 2018 to a total number of around 378,000. Belgium uses less cash money than other countries According to a 2017 survey, cash payments at points of sale (POS, such as shops, restaurants, petrol stations and street merchants) made up 63 percent of all transactions. This was lower than in many other European countries, such as Germany where this percentage was said to be 80 percent. The frequency of cash money use in Belgium was also lower than the European average, according to another 2017 survey. Which card payments are common in Belgium? Bancontact was the leading payment card scheme in the country, with a market share of 82 percent in 2017. This payment scheme only exists in Belgium and uses debit cards from the country’s banks (such as the big banks BNP Paribas Fortis, Belfius and KBC) to pay for goods purchased either online or in a brick-and-mortar store. Contactless payments, or NFC, are less common in Belgium however: these made up four percent of all payment transactions in the country. This was among the lowest percentages reached in the EU-28.

In 2024, Belgian consumers ranked their preferred payment methods for online shopping. Bancontact was the top e-commerce payment choice for purchases, cited by over ** percent of surveyed shoppers. Following closely were credit/debit cards at around ** percent.