Friday, January 20 2012 18:43
Armenian market of bankcards is on difficult path of switch from quantity to quality
ArmInfo. Due to the growth of salary projects in the Armenian market of plastic cards, the trend of switching from the quantitative parameters to the qualitative ones is intensifying, says the December issue of the information and analytical bulletin "Armenian Banks in Card Business" prepared by the specialists of the Agency of Rating Marketing Information (ArmInfo).
According to ArmInfo specialists, the Armenian card market experiences activation of technologies in bonus and discount projects and internet payments, which aim to develop acquiring, first of all, to attract new non-salary individual customers. However, the quantitative growth of the market due to the traditional salary projects fails to keep pace with the quality of services.
As a consequence, the weak technical support of the customers, as well as the card products, which are not worked out sufficiently at the technical and procedural levels, have a negative impact on the level of the customers' loyalty to the bankcards as a reliable, convenient and safe way of payment and obtainment of certain benefits. There are two circumstances hindering the high-quality and trouble-free customer service - the lack of the relevant software and the unpreparedness of the trade and service organizations, including the large trade networks for the complicated discount and bonus procedures in the acquiring process.
Nevertheless, while trying actively to take possession of the market, some banks advertize not so "ready-to-use" service products. The ArmInfo experts think that the growth of the customers' scrupulousness towards the conditions and quality of the services leads to gradual segmentation of the salary corporate projects and to re-distribution in the market, which certainly introduces elements of fair competition and new impulses of innovative development. In the meantime, the ArmInfo analysts think that over the "post-crisis" period the card segment is becoming one of the most important locomotives of credit retail, which experiences difficulties due to the necessity to properly assess the borrowers' risks. As a result, the banks are taking steps to introduce scoring programs either by elaborating them independently or by acquiring such programs and adjusting them to the local conditions. Thus, the entry of the market of plastic bankcards into a technologically new stage dictated by the demand requires further steps to upgrade its tools and infrastructure, the information and analytical report says.
To note, 20 out of the 21 commercial banks of Armenia operate in the market of plastic bankcards. The system has over 900,000 active cards, 760,000 of them have been issued within the Armenian Card national payment system.
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