The Central Bank of Nicaragua published its report on Nicaragua’s payment systems and services for the first quarter of 2025, highlighting higher transaction volumes and values across the country’s payment systems compared with the same period in 2024. The report also points to increased cash in circulation, greater use of payment instruments, and higher activity through payment infrastructure such as non-bank correspondents, ATMs and acquiring channels. Across SINPE, the regional SIPA system and the automated clearing house UNIRED, the report records 3.0 million transactions worth NIO 604,807.8 million, up 57.3% year on year by volume and 18.4% by value. SINPE accounted for NIO 465,721.5 million (+15.5% year on year), with electronic funds transfers representing 50.9% of SINPE’s total value; UNIRED processed NIO 138,294.3 million across 2,030,877 transactions (+29.2% by value and +58.4% by number of operations); and SIPA totalled NIO 792.0 million across 2,112 transfers (+18.3% by value and +27.8% by volume). Use of payment instruments reached 65.9 million operations totalling NIO 1.6 trillion (+30.0% by value and +14.3% by number), with 3.2 million payment cards in circulation (+13.3%), 436,410 electronic money accounts (+39.7%) and 835,344 digital wallet users (+38.5%); debit cards were the most used instrument with 30.3 million transactions (+5%), while intrabank transfers represented 71.1% of total transacted value. Cash in circulation rose to NIO 57,336.4 million (+9.7%), and transactions across bank and fintech payment channels reached 75.2 million operations worth NIO 1.7 trillion (+20.5% by volume and +27.5% by value), with in-person channels showing lower value (NIO 227,688.3 million, -8.5%) but higher volumes (+13.9%) and non-presential channels expanding to NIO 1.5 trillion (+35.6% by value and +37.4% by volume).

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