Middle East · GDP rank #28
Israel
IL · ILS @ 0.3460/USD
Israel runs a card-mature, bank-dominated retail payments market with one wholesale rail (ZAHAV, the BOI-operated RTGS, fully on ISO 20022 since November 2025) and one retail-instant rail (MASAV Faster Payments) underneath the consumer-facing Bit (Bank Hapoalim) and Pay (Bank Leumi) wallets. Bit alone holds roughly half of P2P value across ~3.3m active users. The Capital Markets Authority issued the country's first shekel-pegged stablecoin authorisation in 2024 and the Bank of Israel's digital-shekel design work hands a launch recommendation to the Governor at end-2026.
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
Immediate-charge cards grew post-2019 BOI reform; Mizrahi-Tefahot and Leumi are the issuance leaders.
Credit card share
% · 2024
Israeli 'credit' card is structurally a deferred-debit instrument with end-of-month settlement; the underlying funding model differs from US-style revolving credit.
Mobile wallet share
% · 2024
Apple Pay / Google Pay / Bit-Pay at POS; per-transaction count higher than per-value share.
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
- Cash28%
- Credit card52%
- Debit card9%
- Instant / A2A5%
- Mobile wallet5%
- BNPL~3%
- Other1%
Cash behaviour
- ATM network
- 5,800
- Avg. ATM withdrawal
- ILS 690
- Cash share · value
- 12%
- Cash share · volume
- 28%
Source · Bank of Israel
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.
Isracard issues the bulk of Mastercard volume and the residual Diners International portfolio.
Share of card volume
- Visa60%
- Mastercard30%
- Amex8%
- Other2%
Debit (immediate-charge) transactions
transactions/year · 2024
Debit transaction value
ILS/year · 2024
Credit (deferred-charge) transactions
transactions/year · 2024
Credit transaction value
ILS/year · 2024
Average debit ticket size
ILS · 2024
Average credit ticket size
ILS · 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
- Bit3.3M
2024
- Pay (Bank Leumi)0.9M
2024
- Apple Pay3.8M
2024
- Google Pay1.2M
2024
Notable wallets
Bit
Bank Hapoalim
Pay (Bank Leumi)
Bank Leumi
Apple Pay
Knesset Research and Information Center
Google Pay
Times of Israel
Full reference
Kpis
POS terminals (Israel)
terminals · 2024— EMVCo QR is acquirer-side; no mandated national interoperable QR — a gap relative to ASEAN peers.