Africa-Press – Cape verde. Cape Verdeans used more than 51 million euros at ATMs during the Christmas period, but the tendency is to withdraw smaller amounts and make increasingly more purchases and payments with cards, according to official data released today.
According to data from the Interbank Society and Payment System (SISP), during the Christmas period, from December 15th to 25th, Cape Verdeans carried out 1,568,270 purchase and withdrawal operations on the automatic network, called ‘vinti4’, an increase 10% compared to the same period last year.
These operations totaled 5.6 billion escudos (51 million euros), 5% more compared to the same period last year, according to data consulted by Lusa.
In the period under analysis, Cape Verdeans carried out 1,216,944 purchase operations at Automatic Payment Terminals (POS, Point Of Sale, in English terminology), worth 3.5 billion escudos (31 million euros), an increase of 8% compared to the same period last year.
As for withdrawals at the ‘vinti4’ tellers, 351,326 operations were carried out, totaling 2.1 billion escudos (19 million euros), 0.1% less than that recorded in 2022, according to SISP.
Despite the increase in the number of withdrawals, according to the same source, there was a reduction of 364 escudos (3.3 euros) in the average value of each withdrawal “in line with what was observed throughout the year”.
With this, the entity concluded that “vinti4 users tend to withdraw less and less amounts and make more and more purchases and payments with cards, both in number and value (therefore reducing cash needs)”.
In terms of transfers on the ‘vinti4’ network, 27,159 operations were registered, totaling 802.5 million escudos (7.2 million euros), an increase of 98.4% in the number of operations and 93.7% in value.
SISP recorded a “succession of technical anomalies” in the operation of ATM’s and POS’s, which forced a “stop” in the main and redundant systems, leading to an unavailability of services during the afternoon of December 26th.
The Society told Lusa that ATM services and POS purchases had been restored, warning that some ATMs, particularly those located outside branches, may take or have taken longer for automatic recovery “due to the need for manual reset or being unavailable for other technical reasons outside the context of the incident in question”.
SISP is the entity that manages the Cape Verdean interbank network, which involves in particular ATMs and automatic payment terminals.
Created in 1999, it is participated by the Cape Verdean State (10%) and central bank (40%), in addition to the largest commercial banks, concludes Lusa.
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