Only 4 percent of Romanians use internet banking, GfK survey shows

Romania has one of the lowest penetration rates of Internet banking services in the CEE countries. Only 4 percent of Romanians use internet banking, versus 42 percent in the Czech Republic, 34 percent in Austria or 13 percent in Croatia. Only Bulgaria is behind us, with 2 percent penetration.

From an average of 4.5 activities conducted on the Internet, 4.2 are for information, communication and entertainment, a small number of users accessing the Internet for transactions.

Thus, a total of 9.6 million banked Romanian, only 4 percent check their account through Internet banking transactions and 3 percent are using this online service.

A similar percentage of payments were made online by credit card (3 percent versus 9 percent in Austria) or mobile phone payments (1.6 percent versus 29 percent in Austria) and only 3 percent have purchased a financial service through the Internet.

Although Internet penetration in Romania is one of the lowest in the region, it still offers enough ground for digital financial services, especially since mobile phone usage has been growing, but it is mainly used for communication and entertainment.

Over half of the Romanians use Internet weekly, 80 percent use mobile phones and 13 percent have smartphones.

Furthermore, almost one third of them are tech enthusiasts and another third, even if is not enthusiasts, they are pro-new technology.

“In any field, the low level of familiarity with new technologies hinders their adoption, and online financial services are no exception. Even more, their fears prevent consumers from trying to make payments or buying financial products online are higher than in the case of other new services, because perceived risk of loss is more acute. In addition, many Romanian have not yet found enough motivation to make them relevant to get more informed and take the first step”, says Anca Zamfirescu, Senior Research Consultant, GfK Romania, expert in financial markets and banking.

The data underlying these findings come from the GfK Financial Market Data System (FMDS), conducted by GfK Romania. This is a study conducted every two months, which measures the banking habits of people aged over 15 years of age in 13 CEE countries. The sample of respondents in Romania was 1,000 people, representative at national level for people aged over 15.