Where a Card Buys a Blockbuster Ticket 2026
Introduction
On August 14, 2026, tickets for Avengers: Doomsday went on sale in theaters nationwide — and for millions of adults around the world, the question is not which showtime, but how they would pay. Event ticketing has gone digital almost everywhere: seats are booked through apps, websites and box-office terminals that process cards and mobile payments in seconds.
But the ability to take part in that digital ticket economy is deeply uneven. In Canada, 82.7% of adults own a credit card (2021) and 70.1% have bought something online. In Afghanistan, 0% own a credit card and 0% have bought online (2021). The gap between those two worlds is the subject of this report — a 142-economy look at who can actually buy a blockbuster ticket with a card.
The Data
The table below ranks economies by credit card ownership — the payment rail that underpins most online and in-theater ticket purchases — with online purchase adoption shown alongside. All figures are from the World Bank Global Findex survey, latest available wave (2021–2024).
| Rank | Country | Credit card ownership | Bought online | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | 82.7% | 70.1% | 2021 |
| 2 | Israel | 79.1% | 50.7% | 2021 |
| 3 | Iceland | 74.0% | 72.1% | 2021 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | 71.6% | 60.9% | 2021 |
| 5 | Japan | 69.7% | 52.5% | 2021 |
| 6 | Switzerland | 69.2% | 50.6% | 2021 |
| 7 | South Korea | 68.4% | 77.9% | 2021 |
| 8 | Norway | 66.7% | 86.6% | 2021 |
| 9 | United States | 66.7% | 74.7% | 2021 |
| 10 | Finland | 65.3% | 70.4% | 2021 |
| 11 | United Kingdom | 62.1% | 64.4% | 2021 |
| 12 | Austria | 59.0% | 63.9% | 2021 |
| … | … | … | … | … |
| 138 | Malawi | 0.5% | 2.1% | 2024 |
| 139 | Ethiopia | 0.4% | 0.7% | 2024 |
| 140 | Nepal | 0.4% | 6.2% | 2024 |
| 141 | South Sudan | 0.2% | 0.5% | 2021 |
| 142 | Afghanistan | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2021 |
Analysis
Cards gate the digital ticket queue. The top of the ranking is dominated by high-income economies where a card is a near-universal household item. The United States — home of the Avengers franchise — has 66.7% card ownership, enough to make advance online ticketing the default. At the bottom, card ownership rounds to zero in a band of South Asian and Sub-Saharan economies, where buying a ticket online with plastic is effectively impossible for the average adult. For context on what the online-purchase statistic captures, see our explainer on what online purchase statistics mean.
The mobile money exception. Card ownership is not the only road into digital ticketing. In Kenya, credit card ownership is just 4.4% — but 87.5% of adults hold a mobile money account (2024), and 89.3% make digital payments. Where card rails are thin, mobile money has become the ticket-purchasing alternative, a theme developed in credit cards vs. mobile money. The card ranking alone understates digital ticket access in mobile-money economies — but it captures exactly who can pay with plastic, which remains the dominant rail for advance online ticketing worldwide.
The gap within regions is as wide as the global gap. South Korea (68.4% cards, 77.9% online) and Japan (69.7%, 52.5%) sit near the top of the global ranking, while India (4.6% cards, 16.2% online) and China (46.0% cards, 74.4% online in 2024) show how quickly card penetration can trail digital commerce where alternative rails — mobile wallets in China, UPI-linked accounts in India — dominate instead.
Context
This is not the first time ticketing has met payments in our coverage. The July debate over Ticketmaster’s market power examined the payment infrastructure behind event ticketing; this report looks at the consumer side — who holds the card that the ticket platform expects. The two views are complementary: infrastructure explains what is possible, card ownership explains who can use it. Our earlier work on the global online commerce divide and where credit card ownership runs deepest provides the adjacent rankings.
Sources & method
All figures come from the CostStatGlobe datasets, drawn from the World Bank Global Findex survey (latest wave 2021–2024, 142 economies for card ownership and online purchases). The survey measures the share of adults aged 15+ who own a credit card or bought something online in the past year. Because Findex waves are 3–4 years apart, no projections are published. See the methodology page for how survey years, samples and rankings are handled.