Sales across Saudi Arabia rose by six percent in August compared to the previous month, according to figures released by the Kingdom’s Central Bank (SAMA).
The report shows that point-of-sale transactions increased by SR2.1 billion to SR40.9 billion over the course of the month.
In a sign of the decline of the use of cash in Saudi Arabia, cards and mobile-technology accounted for 95 percent of transactions, equating to 91 percent of all value.
The figures show the use of mobiles to pay for goods and services is increasing, while card transactions are actually falling.
The share of point-of-sale transactions using mobile-technology rose to 28 percent in August, while the share of card transactions fell two percentage points to 63 percent compared to March.
The value of mobile-technology transactions grew by 18 percent from March 2021, to SR11.7 billion, whereas card transactions value declined 3 percent to SR 25.8 billion.
The rate of growth in E-commerce transactions with the use of Mada cards was even higher than mobile technology ones, with the value of such transactions having grown in August by 29 percent to SR6.9 billion. In terms of transaction count, the Mada cards grew by 16 percent to 29,862,223 over the same period.
