The use of payment cars has pushed up the growth of Ukraine's GDP, adding $1.8 billion (over UAH 14 billion) to the total GDP indicator in the period from 2008 to 2012, reads a study conducted by Moody's Analytics for Visa Inc.

The study covered 56 countries, including Ukraine, which have a combined share of global GDP of 93%.

According to the study, extra consumption using payment cards led to an increase in global GDP of $983 billion cumulatively from 2008 to 2012. Over the five-year period GDP of the countries grew by 1.8 percentage notches on average.

Thus, the use of payment cards is an important inventive for the economic growth of many countries, helping mitigating the consequences of the global financial crisis and accelerate the withdrawal from the global recession. Electronic payments also help reducing the share of the shadow economy, increasing transparency of economic processes and providing for additional tax payments, the authors of the study said.

"The growth in the use of payment cards and the impact in the increase in Ukraine's GDP by 0.26% or $1.8 billion certainly shows the advantages of electronic payments and the importance of the availability of an open cashless payment market, which will stimulate competition in the future and promote the introduction of innovations in industry," said Head of the Visa office in Ukraine Svitlana Heorbelidze.

She said that according to the EuroMonitor research company, around 90% of all payments were made using cash in 2012.

"We can assume that the economy will win if we manage to provide access to electronic payments to consumers, particularly, via the remote provision of banking services using mobile phones," she said.