– Over 90 percent of respondents have at least one card, and as many as 50 percent have three or more. A quarter use their cards every day, and a third use them 3 to 5 times a week – highlighted Sanja Žigić, MasterCard Country Manager for Croatia, presenting the latest results of the MasterIndex survey on card usage and consumer habits in Croatia.
The survey is conducted twice a year on a sample of 1000 clients aged 18 to 55 and indicates numerous market trends in the card market, including innovative payment methods.
Contactless payment, which 91 percent of respondents are familiar with and 40 percent use, is increasingly gaining traction among consumers, and Brian Morris, Director of Innovative Payments at MasterCard for the CEE region, addressed new technologies and solutions in the field of digital payments in his presentation.
– There is a lot of interesting activity in payment methods on the market, especially in the area of mobile payments – said Morris, explaining that innovations such as biometric authorization, which are already being tested in the USA and the Netherlands, are expected soon.
– Payment authorization using fingerprints or even selfies (facial recognition technology) is a trend that is coming. Initial tests show that this model is very popular among consumers – stated Morris, noting that CEE countries are surprisingly active in contactless payments.
Regarding security, it is addressed by so-called tokenization, which is MasterCard’s technology where a token replaces the card and is embedded directly into the digital device, already used by major companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung.
When asked when we can expect the introduction of MasterPass in Croatia, Morris said it depends on the speed of developing the necessary infrastructure. He did not want to speculate on a date but emphasized that he hopes it will be in the foreseeable future.
