Cards and Card Transactions

 

Seven million Austrians hold a Maestro debit card (bankcard, savings bank card), i.e. nearly every Austrian aged between 18 and 80. In the year 2006 Austrians carried out 226 million cashless transactions with debit cards in Austria; at 87500 point of sale terminals a cash volume of 11.2 billion EURO was handled.

Furthermore a cash withdrawal volume of 13.1 billion EURO was processed via the central service provider at First Data Austria; pure in-house transactions are not included in this figure. The Austrian ATM network comprised 7539 ATMs in 2006.

“Quick” is a chip based e-purse, issued as an additional debit card function or as account independent “Quick”-charge card. Every “Quick”-card is rechargeable and could be charged up to 400 EURO at ATMs, charge-terminals (bank-account necessary) or in a bank (via cash payment).

In the end of 2006 there were 100000 Quick payment terminals and 6200 charging stations available. Further on 23.8 million e-purse transactions (cp.: 1.2 million (1998), 5.1 million transactions (2001)) were recorded. The value of the “Quick” payments amounted to 135 million EURO.

Approximately 2.3 million credit card products of international card organisations like Visa, MasterCard, Diners and AMEX were in circulation in 2006. MasterCard and VISA are the market leaders in Austria.

However debit cards are far more common, the proportion of debit to credit cards equals 3:1.

The number of payment cards rose significantly in the last years. In the 4^th quarter 2006 eighty-two percent of Austrians older than 15 years declared to hold a payment card. For the most part of the population this concerns a debit card. 28 percent own a credit card, 22 percent are aware that they possess the electronic purse „Quick“ ¹); other 13 percent of payment card owners declared to own a loyalty card with a payment function.

Cash is king in Austria, nevertheless cashless payments gain steadily more ground. The most important payment card instrument to date is the debit card. In the last years, especially at the point of sale, debit card transactions increased considerably. The convenience of cashless payments, rising security needs and the fact that clients are more and more accustomed to payment cards fuel, this trend. Unlike Anglo-Saxon countries Austrian bank customers have the possibility the use overdraft facilities on their account. Therefore the importance of credit cards is significantly lower and rather limited to higher volume transactions.

In 2006 on average 54 percent of debit card holders paid at least once a week with their debit card. Concerning the usage of credit cards seasonal effects (e.g. holidays) are important, yet 20 percent used their credit card at least once a week. The usage rate of loyalty cards averaged out at 36 percent. Finally 14.5% of cardholders who are aware of their e-purse function on the debit card paid with “Quick” once a week.

At retailers cash is the most common payment instrument; over 67% of total sales were paid in cash. The share of the debit card Maestro was almost 27%, credit cards account for 4.9% of sales. Those three payments instruments regroup almost 99% of total sales volume of a merchant. ²)