Total card operations include POS and online transactions, as well as cash withdrawals.
Debit cards, the main segment of Visa Europe portfolio in Romania, supported the 12.4% growth of POS transactions, as well as the 16.6% increase in the number of transactions to merchants.
According to Visa Europe’s general manager for Romania and Croatia, Catalin Cretu, card payments topped several important thresholds in 2014, such as the exceeding of EUR10 million threshold for daily payments at merchants and that of over 10 million monthly POS transactions, out of which over 1 million card monthly transactions for companies.
The average value of transactions to local merchants fell for the second year in a row, by 3.6%, to EUR33.7.
In 2014, the number of Visa cards issued in Romania rose 2.6% to 7.3 million, due to the strengthening of the debit card portfolio by 3.6%.
The number of POS debit card payments rose by 19.4%, at a faster pace compared with the value of payments, which increased by 14.9%, triggering the decrease in the average value of transactions to merchants.
“As regards innovation, an extraordinary step forward for the Romanian cards market was represented by the decision of several member banks that all new issued cards would include contactless technology. In a few months, this led to the tripling of the number of Visa contactless cards, as well as of the POS transactions, which exceeded the value of EUR1 million per month,” Cretu added.
Visa issued 10% more cards for companies, which triggered the increase of total payments on this segment by 14.1%, a hike in the transactions to merchants by 16.3%, and an increase of the number of POS transactions by 21.4%.