As of January this year, people in Bangladesh held a total of 51,677,256 debit, credit, and prepaid cards.

Through this vast number of cards, users spent approximately Tk 510 billion (51,000 crore) in January alone. This raises an important question: what do people actually purchase most frequently using these cards?

Bangladeshi consumers most frequently use debit, credit, and prepaid cards abroad to purchase goods from departmental stores. Retail outlets account for the second-highest category of expenditure.

In addition, people use cards for transportation, medicines, business services, ready-made garments purchase, professional services, government services, cash withdrawals, and utility bill payments, including gas, electricity, and water.

These findings emerged in a recent report published by the Bangladesh Bank.

An analysis of the report shows that, in January this year, transactions worth Tk 8.73 billion (873 crore) were conducted abroad using debit, credit, and prepaid cards.

Of this amount, 24.59 per cent (Tk 2.15 billion) was spent at departmental stores, while 13.5 per cent (Tk 1.18 billion) was spent at retail outlets.