41 percent of Romanians own a bank card, say MasterIndex

Newsroom 31/05/2010 | 11:07

Some 41 percent of Romanians own a bank card nationwide and 54 percent of urban-dwellers have one, according to the MasterIndex study, conducted by MasterCard Europe. Furthermore, 34 percent of card owners said they use them to make payments at least once a month. In general, men make payments to retailers more often than women but the reverse is true when it comes to online spending, when women said that they use their card more often than men (18 percent versus 12 percent).

Some 28 percent of card owners say they pay for more than a quarter of their monthly expenditure by card. Online, 16 percent use a card for payments while 84 percent do not. The highly educated and internet users are more active in e-payments.

As for awareness of the costs associated with cards, 30 percent of debit card owners and 33 percent of credit card users know them, 22 percent and 23 percent respectively knew about them when they bought the card while 44 percent of debit card and 43 percent of credit card users have no idea about the costs. The MasterIndex study was conducted from March 15-30 on 1,237 people from urban and rural areas. Respondents were women and men of over 15 years old.