Catalin Cretu, General Director of Visa Europe for Croatia, Malta, Romania, and Slovenia, presented the annual results of Visa Europe’s operations at today’s press conference.
– 2015 was a very good year for Visa Europe, our revenue increased by 25 percent to 2.3 billion euros, we kept our costs at the same level for the fourth consecutive year (779 million euros), and we returned 739 million euros to our shareholders, thus continuing the practice of returning surplus earnings to our member banks every year – said Cretu, adding that fraud is at a record low level, only 5 cents for every 100 euros spent, which is practically negligible. He emphasized that contactless payments are growing increasingly, with over a billion contactless transactions conducted last year using over 130 million contactless cards.
– Experience shows that there is no question that such cards are riskier – emphasized Cretu.
Visa Europe has also launched tokenization, with Apple Pay among its first clients. Cretu explained that payments have not been ‘alienated’ from banks as previously anticipated, but rather companies are collaborating with the banking sector to ensure that the entire payment process is as secure as possible.
– Tokenization is the standard of the future – he said, reflecting on trends in mobile payments, which he also predicts a bright future for.
He announced the integration of Visa Europe and Visa Inc. into one global company, explaining why he believes this is a good move.
– I believe that Visa Europe will fit excellently into Visa Inc. because we are already extremely complementary. The European business is very important for the company, accounting for 28 percent of payments in global operations, and we still have plenty of room for growth since 70 percent of payments in Europe are still made in cash – concluded Cretu.
Davor Kršul, Country Manager of Visa Europe for Croatia, highlighted that they had 45 billion kuna in Visa card transactions in the domestic market last year, which is a 22 percent increase compared to the previous year. The number of issued cards also grew by 12 percent.
– In Croatia, we have more than one card per capita (4.6 million), with the highest growth in the number of credit cards. We achieved all this in collaboration with our partner banks, of which we have 9 principal members and another 16 sponsoring members. We are accelerating the growth and acceptance of cards and also expanding cooperation with local banks – said Kršul, adding that e-commerce has recorded a growth of 61 percent and that 1 in 14 kuna spent in Croatia last year was spent using a Visa card.
Among the strategic goals for 2016, he mentioned increasing contactless payments, further growth in the number of cards, and closer cooperation with the Croatian market, both with banks and merchants, as well as stakeholders from the public sector and regulation.
