Disappearing cash, rising online scams: how digitalisation is transforming our finances in Hungary
By 2025, Hungary’s payment landscape has changed dramatically. Cash is gradually losing ground, electronic payments have become an everyday norm, while neobank services such as Revolut and Wise are setting a new baseline for customer experience. The country’s instant payment system now processes 53 million transactions in a single quarter, qvik is spreading rapidly in shops, and central fraud prevention has reached a new level. PwC’s newly released Digital Financial Outlook 2025 takes an in-depth look at how digitalisation is reshaping the domestic payments ecosystem.
Strong European-level infrastructure, declining cash use
Hungary’s payment infrastructure is now considered advanced even by European standards. By the second quarter of 2025, the ATM network comprised 5,378 machines, physical card acceptance points exceeded 150,000, and the number of POS terminals reached 275,559. Online acceptance points—now close to 45,000—have more than doubled since 2020, showing that more shops and service providers are offering digital payment options.
The number of bank accounts and bank cards has remained stable at around 10.3 million, but the focus has shifted from quantity to quality of usage. Transfers initiated through mobile banking are increasing steadily, as are the volume and value of card transactions. Meanwhile, 25% of all cards have now been registered in mobile wallets. Contactless POS transactions have essentially peaked, consistently reaching a 99% share.
At the same time, cash use is slowly but steadily decreasing: the number of cash withdrawals fell by 5.8%, and their total value by 1.5%. The average amount withdrawn per ATM transaction stands at HUF 112,000. Yet regional differences remain significant; in Budapest, electronic payments account for 58% of all transactions and 68% of their value, while digitalisation levels remain far lower in eastern Hungary.
Qvik and instant payments: breaking out of the banking app
Hungary pioneered instant payments in 2020 by introducing the Instant Payment System (AFR) as a mandatory standard. The AFR 2.0 package, launched in 2024, builds on this foundation, along with the qvik service—four solutions (QR code, NFC, deeplink and request-to-pay) unified under one standard. The aim is to make instant transfers a viable alternative not only in online banking but also at physical and online checkouts.
By the end of Q2 2025, qvik was available at more than 31,000 locations, and QR/NFC/Link transactions increased by 41.2% in a single quarter. The rise of request-to-pay has been particularly striking: in Q2 2025 alone, 1,185,139 transactions were processed, worth HUF 527.4 billion—representing a 48.9% increase in volume and an 81.4% jump in value.
A key advantage of qvik is that transactions for users are free of transaction duty, making it an attractive alternative to card payments for higher-value purchases—especially for merchants previously discouraged by high card fees.
“To ensure the continued success of qvik, it is essential not only to develop traditional and online payment systems in a coordinated way, but also for providers to actively build users’ trust and digital awareness. According to market expectations, only then can digital payments become widely accepted,” emphasised Norbert Madar, head of PwC Hungary’s digital commerce team.
Fraudsters are not resting: centralised fraud screening arrives
As digital channels expand, cybersecurity is becoming an ever more pressing concern. Globally, damage caused by cybercrime could reach USD 14 trillion by 2028. In Hungary, 220,000 transactions were linked to fraud in 2024, resulting in losses totalling HUF 41.9 billion.
There has been progress, however: card fraud on the issuer side has fallen significantly. Between Q1 2023 and Q2 2025, the rate of successful card fraud dropped from 32% to 9.7%, with the average loss per case at HUF 38,756. In contrast, fraud outside card payments has surged—successful incidents reached a 50% rate by Q2 2025, with average losses close to HUF 940,000 per case.
The channels used for attacks have also shifted. Mobile phones are now the dominant target (78%), followed by the internet (20%), while nearly half of all attacks still originate from email—meaning people remain the primary target. It is in this environment that the Central Fraud Screening System (KVR) was launched on 1 July 2025. Operated by GIRO, it is a hybrid fraud-monitoring platform using rule-based and AI-driven risk scoring to support banks’ decision-making within 500 milliseconds, providing a shared protective layer for the entire market.
Neobank effect: customer experience becomes the ultimate weapon
Revolut, Wise and other international fintech players have set new standards for user experience in just a few years. With simple, fast, cost-effective and highly sophisticated mobile apps, they have attracted 1.5–2 million users in Hungary. Their typical customer is young, urban and digitally savvy; they prefer online and international purchases, with a low reliance on cash withdrawals.
This digital edge is also evident in mobile wallets: in 2023, 69% of foreign fintech cards used in Hungary were registered with Apple Pay or Google Wallet, compared to just 23% of Hungarian-issued cards. Traditional banks are responding with increasingly advanced mobile banking functions (virtual cards, favourable FX rates), multi-channel digital services and faster onboarding. Still, structural barriers remain—such as the lack of account number portability—which continue to hold back competition.
“By 2025, customer experience has become a strategic differentiator. Intuitive UX/UI, voice-based interactions, subscription models and AI-driven personalisation are now setting the norm. The digital standards introduced by neobanks have a market-shaping influence: competition now revolves around personalised offers, seamless customer journeys and transparent pricing. The winners will be those who integrate security, user experience and regulatory compliance into a single, data-driven platform,” summarised Ildikó Cserjés-Kopándi, lead manager at PwC Hungary and head of the research.
What comes next?
Based on thousands of survey responses, in-depth bank interviews and data from the National Bank of Hungary, PwC’s Digital Financial Outlook 2025 sends a clear message: digitalisation is no longer a promise for the future but the new reality of everyday banking. Today, every market player must meet the standards set by neobanks—and Hungarian customers ultimately benefit through faster, more convenient and more secure financial services.
Many Hungarian’s don’t understand they support their own digital prison. Cash is freedom.