Central Bank of Nicaragua reports 50.5% year-on-year increase in payment system transaction volumes in Q2 2025

The Central Bank of Nicaragua published its report on payment systems and services for the second quarter of 2025, highlighting higher transaction volumes and values across the country’s main payment systems versus the same period in 2024, alongside increased cash in circulation and greater use of payment instruments and payment infrastructure. Across SINPE, the regional SIPA system and the UNIRED automated clearing house, 2.9 million transactions totalled NIO 665,347.0 million, representing year-on-year growth of 50.5% in volume and 33.1% in value. SINPE accounted for NIO 515,620.4 million in value, up 33.9%, with electronic funds transfers (TEF) representing 54.2% of SINPE’s total value. UNIRED processed NIO 148,773.5 million across 2,337,004 operations, up 30.7% in value and 70.0% in number of operations, while SIPA transactions totalled NIO 953.2 million across 2,311 transfers, up 9.1% in value and 23.9% in volume. Use of payment instruments totalled 68.5 million operations worth NIO 1.5 trillion, up 43.4% in value and 21.2% in number of operations, with 3.4 million payment cards in circulation (+14.7% year-on-year), 461,624 e-money accounts (+40.2%) and 900,643 digital wallet users (+38.4%); debit cards were the most used instrument with 30.8 million transactions (+9%), and intrabank transfers represented 69.0% of total value transacted. Cash in circulation reached NIO 57,417.8 million (+19.3%), of which 97.0% was regular-issue banknotes. Payment channels provided by banks and fintech providers recorded 78 million operations worth NIO 1.7 trillion, up 19.4% in volume and 43.9% in value, with in-person channels showing lower value (NIO 238,517.1 million, -5.5%) but higher volumes (+12.0%), and non-presential channels reaching NIO 1.4 trillion (+57.5% in value and +38.5% in volume).