While card payments have been experiencing high growth for several years in a row, credit card products remain stagnant even through 2026.
Bank of Albania data shows that in the middle of this year the Albanian banking sector reported a total of 119,813 active credit cards. The number of credit cards has marked a very small increase, by less than 0.2% since the beginning of the year.
Always referring to the statistics of the Bank of Albania, the total number of credit card payments for the first 6 months of the year reached 2.62 million, an increase of 14% compared to the same period a year earlier.
However, the number and value of card payments does not refer only to credit cards issued by Albanian banks, but to all card payments made in the banking sector's POS infrastructure. It is estimated that credit card payments made by tourists or foreign visitors also have a significant share.
However, the growth in credit card payments is significantly lower compared to the 23% growth recorded by debit card payments.
The figures show that credit cards remain an underdeveloped product in the Albanian banking sector. Their current number, around 120 thousand cards, also represents a historical limit. Credit cards have never managed to grow beyond this limit. This can be mainly explained by the fact that the Albanian economy continues to have a very high level of use of physical money as an instrument for economic transactions, while the credit card is a product mainly dedicated to non-cash payments.
This has made it difficult to penetrate this product in the market and the banking sector itself in general has not had a very strong focus on it in the consumer products segment. By the end of 2024, the market was dominated by two banks, BKT and Raiffeisen, which together owned more than 64% of the number of active cards.
According to data from the Bank of Albania, the average effective interest rate of credit cards for the first 6 months of 2026 (for amounts up to 200 thousand lek) was 27.91% for cards in Lek and 24.46% for cards in Euro. Compared to the previous year, the average interest rates have increased significantly, both for Lek and Euro.
In average terms, however, card interest rates remain relatively high compared to similar consumer banking credit products. This is due to the high degree of risk that credit cards carry as credit products, but also to the existence of a grace period, within which the client can pay the obligation without interest.
The rapid growth in the number of businesses accepting card payments could be an important prerequisite for developing the credit card market, as a credit product primarily oriented towards non-cash payments. However, so far the figures show that this product is failing to develop and grow further./Monitor
