Israelis and Calik to step in credit card market

Bank Pozitif and Aktifbank are getting ready to join giants' arena ın credit cards business. Bank Pozitif, which gets necessary approvals from Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA), have already started operations while Calik Group is counting down for green light.


There will be two more players in thie market in which currently 52 million cards circulate. Along wıth Garanti Bank's Bonus, Yapı Kredi's World, İş Bank's Maximum, HSBC's Advantage and Bank Asya's Asya Card the newest two players will be Bank Pozitif and Aktifbank...

‘We will be in the market in fall’

Israil-based Bank Hapoalim's Turkish subsidiary Bank Pozitif has received aprovals from banking watchdog last month. According to Ufuk Sanlı of Vatan daily, Bank Pozitif Chairman Hasan Akçakayalloglu said: ''We have applied BRSA to provide credit card service with our customers and we have received the approval very recently. Now we are about to complete technical audits. Once they are completed we are aiming to offer credit cards to the customers with our own Bank Pozitif brand.''

Akçakayalıoglu said they have not set a target for credit cards in 2012. ''We have foreseen 2012 as an investment year and a launching phase in parallel to preparations. That's why we did not set a challenging goal. We will be very active in credit cards in 2013. For that year our target is to provide 25-30,000 customers with credit cards. For following years we have a goal of exceeding 250,000,'' he acknowledged.

Aktifbank counts down

Calik Group's Aktifbank is waiting for approvals. In response to our question, senior managers admitted their application but mentioned they had not received a response yet. ''It is to early to talk about,'' they said.

Calik Group's Albanian subsidiary BKT is very active in private banking in Albania and Kosovo. Calık Group has acquired an extensive experience in Balkan region where the credit cards operations are stil in early stages. Now, the holding needs to pay more effort to achieve the same success in its home market.

Credit cards more than tripled in 10 years

The number of credit cards has increased by 230 percent to 52 million in ten years from 15.5 million in 2002. In the same period number of bank cards increased to 85 million from 35 million. Number of POS jumped by 300 percent to 1.987 million from 496,000. Total credit card spending has reached to 294 billion liras from 86.5 billion liras.

Garanti is the largest agent in credit cards 

Banka	Card Sayısı
Garanti	8.889.000
Yapı Kredi Bankası	8.540.000
İş Bankası	5.822.000
Akbank	5.463.000
Finansbank	4.815.000
Ziraat Bankası	3.550.000
Vakıflar Bankası	2.706.000
HSBC Bank	2.222.000
Halk Bankası	2.200.000
Denizbank	2.055.000
TEB	2.042.000
Bank Asya	1.966.000

(Vatan, 13 May 2012)