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 The average amount withdrawn per ATM transaction stands at HUF 112,000.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.

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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.