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Cyprus Payment Landscape: A Deep Dive Into H1 2025 Trends

by THEFUTURE.TEAM

February 4, 2026

Recent data from the Central Bank of Cyprus provides a clearer picture of how payment behavior is changing across the country. In the first half of 2025, small everyday purchases were mostly made with cards, while larger payments were primarily carried out through credit transfers. With an average value of €4,496, credit transfers accounted for 84% of the total transaction value, reflecting a pattern similar to the wider euro area.

Shifting Payment Preferences

An analysis of the ten most valuable categories of goods and services purchased with Cypriot cards highlights a clear divide between in-store and online spending. Payments to payment institutions represented the largest share at 14% (€912 million), followed by government-related payments at nearly 12% (€768 million) and supermarket purchases at 11% (€690 million). Transactions involving payment institutions and government services were conducted mostly online, at 100% and 89% respectively, while supermarket purchases were overwhelmingly made in person, reaching 99%.

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Card Penetration And Consumer Adoption

By the end of the first half of 2025, the number of payment cards in circulation had risen by 7% compared to the same period in 2024, reaching a total of 2 million cards. This equates to roughly two cards per resident, pointing to broad adoption of digital payment methods throughout the country.

Corporate Transactions And Payment Instruments

Businesses continue to favor credit transfers, mainly because they offer stronger security, lower transaction costs, and better control over payment timing for higher-value operations. Across the euro area, the average corporate credit transfer reached €6,403 and represented 92% of total transaction value in H1 2025. Cheques, although steadily declining in use, still accounted for 6% of value with an average amount of €3,807, indicating that traditional payment tools have not disappeared entirely.

Online Versus Point‐of‐Sale Card Transactions

Across the euro area, card usage remains more common in physical stores, with 81% of transactions by volume taking place at point of sale and 19% online. In value terms, the split is 70% in-store and 30% online. Cyprus follows a similar pattern, though the average transaction size differs notably: approximately €37 at POS terminals compared with €125 online. This gap suggests that consumers are more inclined to use digital channels for higher-value purchases.

Advancements In Contactless Payments And ATM Deployment

Payment infrastructure has also seen gradual changes. The number of ATMs in Cyprus increased slightly from 397 at the end of H1 2024 to 405 by H1 2025, largely due to installations in remote and mountainous areas aimed at maintaining cash accessibility. About 72% of ATMs now support contactless transactions. Despite an overall 12% decline in ATM numbers over the past five years in both Cyprus and the broader euro area, the average withdrawal amount in Cyprus rose by 28%, climbing from €291 in H1 2022 to €372 in H1 2025.

Overall, the data points to a steady shift toward digital and credit-based payments in both Cyprus and the wider European market, while cash and traditional instruments continue to play a smaller but still visible role in everyday financial behavior.

The Future Forbes Realty Global Properties

by News Editor

August 24, 2026

Courts Are Still Applying Old Copyright Rules To AI

AI companies train models on enormous amounts of published material, including books, articles and academic research. Whether using that content without authors’ permission violates copyright law remains unresolved.

Much of the debate centres on fair use, which allows copyrighted material to be used without permission in certain circumstances. Courts consider factors such as the purpose of the use, how much material was involved and its impact on the original market.

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Anthropic Case Sets An Important Precedent

A major case involving Anthropic and a group of authors provided one of the clearest rulings so far. Judge William Alsup found that using copyrighted books to train AI models was lawful, comparing the process to people reading and studying literature before creating something new.

Anthropic was nevertheless ordered to pay $1.5 billion in a settlement. The penalty concerned books the company had obtained from illegal online libraries rather than the AI training itself.

For AI companies, that distinction could prove significant because it separates studying copyrighted material from directly copying it.

Competition Could Be The Key Issue

A case involving Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence offers a different perspective. A court ruled that Ross could not claim fair use after using Reuters’ copyrighted material to develop a competing AI-powered legal research platform.

The decision suggests courts may be less willing to consider AI training fair use when copyrighted content is used to build a product that directly competes with the original.

For authors, an unresolved question is whether AI-generated content should be considered competition for the works used to train these models.

The Law Has Yet To Catch Up

US copyright law predates generative AI by decades, leaving courts to apply old principles to new technology. Questions also remain over copyright protection for AI-generated works. In Thaler v. Perlmutter, a court ruled that material created entirely by AI cannot receive copyright protection.

Major AI companies remain involved in copyright litigation, and different courts could reach different conclusions. For now, there is no universal rule: the legality of AI training will depend on the circumstances of each case and how courts ultimately interpret copyright and fair use.