Bulgarians were increasingly more active in using their debit and credit cards for shopping, rather than just a means to withdraw cash from the closest ATM, a survey by MasterCard Europe showed. The card operator commissioned its first MasterIndex survey for Bulgaria, which was done among 1000 bank card users in August and September 2009.

The potential for card payments’ growth in Bulgaria was very high, MasterCard Europe vice president for the Balkans Manuel Alexe said in a statement.

"I often say that our key competitor is cash and in a country where only one per cent of card holders associate them with cash withdrawals, the card payments industry has great potential," Alexe said.

Half of the respondents in the survey said they owned a debit card and 29 per cent said that they owned both debit and credit cards. The main reason for getting a card was the ease of use (49 per cent), but the choice of the card issuer was most often determined by the respondent’s employer (53 per cent). In recent years, Bulgarian employers have increasingly begun paying salaries via bank transfer, with lenders offering complimentary debit cards.

Only 20 per cent of respondents said they used their cards solely to withdraw cash from ATMs. About 40 per cent of credit card owners said that they used the cards to buy food and clothes and 25 per cent said they used the cards to pay utility bills.

Half the payments made with bank cards were for food and clothes, and a further 38 per cent were payments of utility bills, according to the survey.

Despite the spreading use of credit and debit cards, their holders wanted to use them for more payments, MasterCard said. About 35 per cent of respondents said they would like to pay their taxes and administrative fees with their bank cards.

Other locations that needed more point-of-sale terminals included cafes and restaurants (17 per cent of respondents), petrol stations (16 per cent), open-air markets (15 per cent) and taxis (seven per cent).

On average, Bulgarians spent 131 leva on each transaction with a debit card and 243 leva on each transaction with a credit card.

About 42 per cent said that they used their card several times a month and 15 per cent said they did so several times a week. Four per cent said they used their card daily.

Close to half of respondents (47 per cent) said that they had owned a bank card for more than five years and a further 27 per cent said they had owned a card for more than three years. Only eight per cent got their first card in the past year.