According to Nordea, online shopping is increasing amongst bank’s customers – card usage for e-shopping in 2015 grew by more than 16% compared to 2014 in Baltics. Also bank’s customers are keener on using cards for daily payments instead of cash in the whole Baltic market, indicating that customers trust towards cards as convenient tool for daily payments has increased, says Margus Aun, Head of Accounts and Cards Baltics.
“Online purchasing keeps gaining bigger interest from consumers, so as total figures of credit cards users. This is naturally caused by wider range of products and services, and better pricing offered by online merchants. And this rapid growth is obviously supported by credit cards offering universal and secure tool to complete purchases in on line environment,” says Margus Aun, Head of Accounts and Cards Baltics. “Moreover, credit cards in addition to its basic functions provide various appealing to our customer’s functions, such as - foreign travel insurance policy for free, purchase insurance, different discounts and points savings account.
“General trends of cards usage in Latvia reflect similar trends compared to all Baltic region. In 2015 card payments increased by 8% compared to 2014. The market is also showing evidence in bigger trust to e-commerce in Latvia. Card usage in online shopping increased 9% in 2015. As the overall popularity of intranet based solutions, including shopping on Internet, grows, representing increase by more than 11% all over Europe*, safety becomes more relevant to every consumer. Even though, using credit cards is still one of most reliable and convenient methods, bank advices to comply with the general conditions for secure online shopping, for example to make purchases at well-known traders or do not use the salary account card for buying online,” says Kitija Rudzite, Cards product manager in Nordea Latvia.
*The figures come from a study conducted by RetailMeNot and the Centre for Retail Research published on year 2015.