Only 12.6% of Moldovans use banking cards

Only 12.6% of the population in Moldova uses banking cards, a recently conducted survey by Business Intelligent Service shows. While in the developed countries the banking cards became a wide-spread and quite convenient service, in Moldova their popularity is still at an incipient stage, the experts say. However in 2004 and 2005, the percentage of the users constituted only 9.7%. The banking cards are mainly used in urban areas and the central region of Moldova. The majority of employees working in the public sector, as well as NGOs and international representations, projects, and missions said they use banking cards. Banking cards are more often used by the residents of urban settlements (19.5%) compared to villagers (7.9%). About 25% of the users have higher education. At the same time, young persons aged 20-29 are the most frequent users of banking cards (27.8%). According to experts, the state policy in the banking field should ensure the necessary conditions for the dynamic development of the banks by introducing the most advanced technologies and the most innovative solutions for customers in what concerns the use of banking cards. According to the NBM, at the end of the first quarter of 2007, about 617 thousand cards were circulating in Moldova, of which 604 thousand are international banking cards. During this period, there were issued about 69.4 thousand new cards, while 31.4 thousand were withdrawn from circulation. The value of the operations with cards issued in Moldova constituted about MDL 1.6 bln in the first quarter, against MDL 5.5 bln during the entire period of the last year. 2 Moldovan banks are issuing cards in the MoldCard System, 1 bank – Unicard system, 7 banks – Visa International system and all 12 banks of Moldova – in the Master Card Worldwide system.