Visa Europe wants to stimulate online card payments in Romania

Visa Europe, together with member banks in Romania, announced this week the launch of a national campaign promoting the usage of cards for online payments. The campaign includes marketing and PR components and should end by December, when the Christmas shopping spree begins. Visa will invest over EUR 1 million in communication campaigns for cardholders this year.

Currently, less than 200,000 cards of the total 9 million cards pre-enrolled by banks in Romania have been activated in the 3D Secure platforms, such as the service Verified by Visa, which secures online transactions by card. Verified by Visa adds an additional layer of security that verifies the legitimacy of both parties in an online transaction.

Visa wants 1 million cards to be activated in the 3D secure platform in the following three years. At the moment, 11 banks in Romania have implemented this technology for customer cards.

“We have to overcome the lack of information around the security of online transactions and to convince Romanians of the safety of these transactions through the Verified by Visa platform. Currently, we are working together with the member banks to simplify the enrolment procedure in Verified by Visa, while maintaining an optimal level of security. The development of e-commerce and improvement of services for the population, such as the possibility of paying taxes online by cards, depend on these challenges”, states Catalin Cretu, General Manager Romania, Visa Europe.

Cretu also mentioned that the commerce facilitated by the internet reached EUR 1 billion while card payments amounted to EUR 130 million at end-2010. Romania’s fraud ratio involving cards is nine times lower than the Visa Europe average.

In the EU, approximately 48 percent of transactions are Verified by Visa, while in Romania, 42 percent of total transaction were enrolled in this secure platform.

In Europe, there are 430 million Visa debit, credit and commercial cards. In the 12 months ending March 2011 those cards were used to make purchases and cash withdrawals to the value of €1.6 trillion. 12.5% of consumer spending at point of sale in Europe is with a Visa card, and more than 70% of that is on Visa debit cards.

Ovidiu Posirca