The statement said that over the period running from November 24th to December 28th, there were a total of 83.6 million individual transactions and a rise of 5.9% year-on-year.


Hence, there was a year-on-year decrease of 1% in the amount spent per terminal transaction that came in at €41 this year and down from €42 in 2013.


This more transactions but for smaller amounts was also reflected in the amount of cash withdrawn from the Portuguese ATM system that dropped 0.3% in total terms to €2.766 billion even while the number of actual withdrawals rose 0.2% to €41.8 million.


Correspondingly, the actual amount withdrawn in each visit to the hole-in-the-wall fell by 0.5% even while remaining a rounded off €66.


SIBS thus concluded that in year-on-year terms the Multibanco system as a whole had dealt with a 3.9% rise in the number of operations and 2.5% in the actual amount handled.