Visa transactions increased on the local market unlike the low or negative growth in other EU-member states, Catalin Cretu, general manager of Visa Europe’s Romanian unit, told a news conference. According to Cretu, more Romanians understand the advantages, efficiency and safety of electronic payments.
Romanians perform 4 of 10 transactions with a Visa card directly to traders, spending a total of EUR17.5 billion. A number of 568,000 average transactions per day were performed in 2012, 60,000 more than in a day of the previous year.
The fraud/sale ratio set at 0.003% in Romania, from 0.04% in Europe.
The average value of a transaction decreased to EUR36.5 in Romania, mirroring the more frequent trend of using Visa cards for daily small value payments.
The number of cards issued under Visa logo increased by 4% in fiscal year October 2011-September 2012, to 7.1 million, on the backdrop of expanding the business cards portfolio.
Business cards represent the most dynamic segment of Visa portfolio. Thus, the cards for companies registered two-digit increases and the value of transactions was up 28.6%, to EUR3.6 billion, fueled by payments to traders, up 31.9%.
The transactions with debit cards, the main segment of Visa Europe portfolio on the local market, increased by 20% in value and number in 2012.
Visa Europe posted annual revenues of EUR1.11 billion in 2012, while the pre-tax profit touched EUR260 million.