BCR Chisinau becomes member of MasterCard

Banca Comerciala Romana in Chisinau announced its membership in the international payment system with credit cards – MasterCard. BCR Chisinau will start issuing cards in the first half of 2007. Also, the bank will create and develop its own network of cash machines. This way, BCR Chisinau will become the third bank from Moldova which issues cards in the MasterCard system. At present, 12 Moldovan banks issue cards, of them 7 – in Visa system, 2 – in the local MoldCardSystem and 1 – in the local Unicard system. At the end of September, about 524 thousand credit cards were used in Moldova, of which 163 thousand issued in the first nine months of 2006. BCR Chisinau is subsidiary of Banca Comerciala Romana, which belongs to the Austrian group Erste Bank starting this year. In the first nine months of 2006, BCR Chisinau registered the highest growing rhythm of the assets in the Moldovan banking system – 2.1-fold or MDL 630 mln. As regards the volume of the assets, the bank ranks the 10th among 15 commercial banks from Moldova.