Quarterly debit and credit card number in circulation in the Netherlands 2005-2021

The total amount of debit and credit cards generally increased between 2005 and 2021. By the third quarter of 2021, there were over 31.3 million debit cards in the Netherlands. In this same period, Dutch consumers increasingly paid for their purchases by debit card as the volume of debit card payment transactions increased with every passing year. Consumers made more use of debit cards, whilst technical disruptions have declined. The objective of both banks and retailers in the Netherlands was to reach a ratio of 60 percent debit card and 40 percent cash payments by consumers by the end of 2018. In that period, the number of credit cards amounted to about 6.3 million cards. Leading reasons in the Netherlands to use credit cards domestically include online purchases, hotel reservations and payments in restaurants.