Cards and Consumer Finance in Greece 2008

Lafferty Cards & Consumer Finance in Greece 2008

Introduction

Lafferty Cards & Consumer Finance in Greece 2008 is the most comprehensive research available on consumer finance and credit cards in the market. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods is used by a dedicated team of in-house researchers and analysts to produce accurate and unbiased data. It comprises of 11 sections: key facts, demographics, the economy, consumer credit market, cards market, credit cards profit pool, pricing and enhancements, networks, credit cards issuers, merchant acquiring & processing and other cards market information. The report is reader friendly through the use of a bullet point format and graphs, pie charts and tables to help illustrate key data. Industry experts are always on hand to talk you through any data queries.

Highlights

Greece has witnessed a sharp rise in consumer borrowing as the economy has grown rapidly. However, consumer debt is still low in relation to disposable income.

Credit cards have historically been used as a means of medium term borrowing rather - than as a transaction tool in Greece.

Driven by high levels of credit card profitability (the highest in Western Europe), Greek banks have focused heavily on promoting credit cards usage for borrowing and spend over the years and in doing so, have undermined the main role of debit cards as a payment instrument - the latter effectively being used as a cash card.

With an estimated 6.5 million credit cards at the end of 2007 against an employed population of just 4.5 million the market for credit cards is relatively well developed and there is now little growth potential for cards in issue. As a result, the focus of Greek issuers has shifted from acquiring new customers to relationship building.