Dutch-held ING bank holds the largest portfolio of contactless cards, of over 188,000 units, though it entered this segment less than a year ago. However, ING embraced an aggressive strategy to develop this niche.
BRD, the first bank in Romania to introduce contactless cards in its offer, has reached 140,000 such cards in four years. The bank has, though, the largest acceptance network, of around 3,000 contactless POS terminals, and cards can be also used for subway access or for payment in public transport in several cities. “We estimate we hold around 40-45% of the acceptance market,” stated BRD officials.
According to data that banks issuing contactless cards provided to ZF, the market holds a number of 5,500 contactless POS terminals. There are no data on the number of POS terminals installed by Credit Europe, which holds 80,000 such cards in its portfolio.
The latest bank to enter the segment is Banca Transilvania, which issued the first contactless cards in March. For the time being, it holds only 3,000 such cards and it hasn’t developed a POS network, yet. Such terminals would be installed starting May, according to the bank’s officials.
The second largest network of contactless POS terminals, of 1,100 units, is held by BCR, the largest bank in Romania. BCR started issuing contactless cards in May 2011 and now holds 25,000 such units.
However, contactless card market development has been slow. Until last year, only two banks, BCR and BRD, were present on the market. Hence, the acceptance network has remained underdeveloped, with the number of contactless POS terminals now accounting for just 4% in the total number of terminals. Domestic merchants had a total of around 128,000 POS terminals installed at the end of 2013.
Beside BRD and BCR, ING Bank also owns an acceptance network of over 1,000 units. At the same time, Austria’s Raiffeisen has reached 400 contactless terminals, in the context where it entered the market last November.
From security reasons, contactless cards have a number of limitations as regards the value and number of daily transactions. As a rule, the ceiling for the value of a transaction stands at 100 lei. Such a card can cost the user as much as RON100/year, but in certain cases the management fee can be zero.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)