The National Bank of Poland published statistics about the payment card market for the fourth quarter of last year. I'd like to draw your attention to some interesting and significant numbers that demonstrate how successful Blik has been in the e-commerce environment.

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According to NBP, in the period between October and December last year shoppers used their cards to pay online 24.1 million times. That's a significant increase compared to the third quarter of 2018, when the number of such transactions was 19 million. But in the same period the number of online Blik transactions grew a lot quicker. Several weeks ago, the company managing the system said that the number of Blik payments in the fourth quarter of 2018 surpassed 25 million, compared to 17.5 million in the third quarter. This means that for the first time in the history of the Polish payment market, Blik beat card payments at online stores.

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Blik is a mobile payment system offered by about a dozen banks operating on the Polish market. Online payments are its most popular functionality. They amount to about 75 percent of all Blik operations. Last year users made almost 100 million online transactions with Blik, the total value of which was approximately 12 billion złoty (2.8 billion euro). The Polish system's success was probably the reason why Mastercard decided to invest in the company managing it. The transaction is expected to be finalized by the end of the year.