THE ROMANIAN CARD MARKET

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the Romanian card market in the last decade, based on the statistic data, against other Eastern European Countries and its perspectives in the next years. The use of cards is important for banks, due to the significant interests and tax gained this way, but Romanian market is still underdeveloped because of the population behavior in the payment area and due to the lack of the card acceptance infrastructure at the merchants for a long period of time. In Romania, there are still many cards with a cash-withdrawals function, but the Romanian card industry has a great potential, because it was underdeveloped. The crisis was an opportunity on the market cards because the credit products have dropped significantly and banks had to develop other banking products, realized the importance of the cards and began to invest in infrastructure.

Keywords

• payments cards, Romania, ATMs