Irish credit and debit card users spent more on hotels abroad than in Ireland in June for the first time since 2022, the Central Bank said on Wednesday, amid a modest fall in the value of domestic card payments in the month.
The total value of card payments in June was close to €9.5 billion, up 1.7 per cent on May and more than 15 per cent ahead of June 2024. The number of card payments was also up year-on-year, by 11.6 per cent.
On a monthly basis, however, domestic card spending values were by 0.2 per cent or €16.09 million weaker on May and were down 1.5 per cent in terms of volume.
Spending abroad on Irish cards, meanwhile, increased by 10.7 per cent in value terms over May and 16.6 per cent year-on-year, “likely owing to the beginning of the holiday season”, the Central Bank said.
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Predictably, consumer spending on hotels and other accommodation services surged. Households in the Republic spent €357.1 million on accommodation services, up €35.7 million or 11.11 per cent from May and 11.7 per cent from 12 months previously.
Expenditure on hotels, motels and resorts “single-handedly drove the change in accommodation spending” in the month, the Central Bank said. Consumers spent an additional €35.9 million on hotels in June compared with April, nearly 80 per cent of which was recorded abroad.
June was the first month since October 2022, when the Central Bank began collecting card payment data, that spending on foreign hotels was higher than the money spent on accommodation in the State.
“In fact, 52 per cent of total spending on this [sector] was recorded outside of Ireland,” the regulator said.
Separately on Wednesday, Bank of Ireland released figures showing that the number of contactless card payment transactions through digital wallets like Apple and Google Pay were 2 per cent higher in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the same three-month stretch last year. So-called tap-and-go payment volumes remained unchanged.
ATM withdrawals, meanwhile, were down 11 per cent year-on-year.
“There is a steady trend in consumers increasingly engaging with digital payments options, as the ease and flexibility of making both ecommerce transactions and digital wallet payments suits their busy lives,” said Ciaran Coyle, group chief operating officer at Bank of Ireland.
