Ecuador Digital Payments Scale As Cash Withdrawals Drop 22% In 2025
Development
Ecuador's payments market is shifting toward QR codes, mobile wallets, POS channels, payment buttons, and immediate interbank transfers.
The Banco Central del Ecuador linked greater use of electronic payments in 2025 with lower cash preference. Savings-account cash withdrawals through private-bank channels fell from USD 42.060 billion in 2024 to USD 32.669 billion in 2025, a 22% decline.
Transaction count moved differently. Cash-withdrawal operations increased 0.99%, from 371.01 million in 2024 to 374.69 million in 2025.
Key data
| Indicator | Period | Value |
|---|---|---|
| POS and electronic payment billing | Jan-May 2026 | USD 6.499B |
| POS and electronic payment billing | Jan-May 2024 | USD 4.8029B |
| Two-year increase | Jan-May 2024 to Jan-May 2026 | 35% |
| Card payment volume | Jan-May 2026 | USD 9.811B |
| Card payment volume | Jan-May 2024 | USD 8.327B |
| Card payment increase | Jan-May 2024 to Jan-May 2026 | 18% |
Banred processed 268 million immediate interbank transfers in 2025, 99 million more than the previous year, representing 58% growth.
Asobanca's 2024 study counted 1.790 billion banking transactions, equivalent to 57 operations per second, moving USD 535.843 billion, or 4.3 times nominal GDP.
Digital channels concentrated 67.7% of transaction count and 67% of amount moved. The mobile channel alone exceeded 970 million transactions, or 54.2% of total transactions.
Platform competition
DeUna began operating in 2020 and had more than 6 million users and more than 620,000 affiliated merchants by April 2026. The wallet added phone-based debit and credit-card acceptance for merchants in April.
Produbanco enabled QR payments and collections in May 2026. In two months, the feature reached about 10% of its target public, while user transaction activity increased 30%.
PanaPay, a Coonecta Red Transaccional wallet, launched in December 2025 with three cooperatives. It now includes 10 cooperatives and 3,000 affiliated merchants.
Market implication
The shift supports financial inclusion, merchant formalization, and bank data capture. For financial institutions, the value is not only fee volume; it is transaction visibility that can support credit scoring and product targeting.
Smartphone penetration remains a constraint. INEC data for July 2025 showed 59.3% of the population, or 10.3 million people age five and older, had a smartphone.
What to watch
- Merchant adoption outside Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca
- Competition between bank wallets, cooperative wallets, and card networks
- Whether digital-payment data converts into expanded microcredit and SME credit
- Consumer trust and financial-education campaigns in rural areas
Source: El Universo.
Source
El Universo — “Auge de códigos QR y billeteras móviles dinamizan los pagos y cobros en bancos y cooperativas”
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