Europe · GDP rank #25
Belgium
BE · EUR @ 1.1595/USD
Belgium runs on a single domestic debit scheme. Bancontact carried 2.5 billion transactions in 2024 — roughly nine in ten POS card swipes — and Payconiq sits on top of it for mobile. SEPA Instant adoption is among the highest in the euro area on the back of the EU Instant Payments Regulation, and the EPI/Wero retail rollout reached Belgium in March 2026. The interesting questions are about acquirer economics and Wero acceptance, not about whether cards or instant will win.
Tab 02
Consumer payments
How consumers actually pay: the share of cash, the stock and flow of cards, the scheme split at checkout, which mobile wallets matter, and how broadly POS acceptance reaches.
Every figure is authored against a named publisher — click the ⓘ anywhere to open the source panel with the underlying URL and access date.
Cash share of POS volume
% · 2024
Debit card share
% · 2024
Credit card share
% · 2024
Mobile wallet share
% · 2024
Roughly one in five Bancontact transactions is now initiated from a mobile device.
Payment mix
At the point of sale
The shares below are POS volume (count of transactions), which reads differently from POS value. For the value-share read, see the card-economy grid underneath.
Share of POS
- Cash39%
- Credit card6%
- Debit card47%
- Instant / A2A3%
- Mobile wallet~22%
- BNPL8%
- Other5%
Cash behaviour
- ATM network
- 5,950
- Avg. ATM withdrawal
- €140
- Cash share · value
- 23%
- Cash share · volume
- 39%
Source · Batopin / NBB
Scheme share
Which networks clear the card volume
Scheme share is the split of general-purpose card purchase volume — not issuance, not count of cards. A high domestic share (e.g. UnionPay, RuPay, ELO) means a large share of card flow never touches a global scheme.
Domestic debit scheme; co-badged with Maestro historically, now with Debit Mastercard since Maestro sunset 2023.
Share of card volume
- Visa8%
- Mastercard5%
- Amex1%
- Other1%
- Domestic Scheme85%
Bancontact transactions
transactions/year · 2024
Bancontact transaction value
EUR/year · 2024
Credit card transactions
transactions/year · 2024
Credit card transaction value
EUR/year · 2024
Average Bancontact ticket size
EUR · 2024
Average credit ticket size
EUR · 2024
Mobile wallets
Where wallets actually land
User counts are the best single scalar for wallet reach, but they understate usage intensity in markets where one super-app carries multi-digit trillions of renminbi or rupees. For flow, see the rails tab.
Active users
- Payconiq by Bancontact (Bancontact Pay from 2026)2.0M
2025
- Apple Pay2.4M
2024
- Google Pay1.6M
2024
- Wero (EPI)~1.8M
Q1 2026
Notable wallets
Payconiq by Bancontact (Bancontact Pay from 2026)
Belga News Agency
Apple Pay
Statista (Worldpay GPR)
Google Pay
Statista
Wero (EPI)
European Payments Initiative
Full reference