This statistic is provided by the sociological agency iData, with the note that it refers only to cards issued in the Republic of Moldova.
Out of this number of transactions, 305.2 million payments were made with debit cards and only 4.9 million with credit cards.
Visa and MasterCard are the only types of bank cards issued by Moldovan banks.
After the information that Europe is going to urgently reduce its dependence on American payment systems such as Visa and Mastercard, otherwise their dominance on the market can be used as a weapon, a natural question arises: what cards will Moldovan residents use, if there are no others in the country?
There is no alternative
At present, on the territory of the European Union banks issue cards of two international payment systems – Visa and MasterCard. At the same time, the ECB emphasizes that competition limited to only two payment systems with similar structure and high commissions may hinder the maintenance of a low level of payment commissions in Europe in the future.
Martina Weimert, director of the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a European banking association, said in an interview with the Financial Times on Feb. 9 that there is an “urgent need” to create a European alternative to the U.S. payment systems Visa and MasterCard.
“We are very dependent on international payment solutions. We already have excellent domestic payment systems, but nothing cross-border. If we say that independence is so important, and we all know that it is a matter of time, we urgently need to act,” Ms. Weimert said.
Thus, it is too early for Moldovan citizens to worry. Europe does not have its own alternatives to American payment systems yet either.
