Austria an Emergent Card Payments Market

Research and Markets has named Austria as an emerging market for the cards and payments industry.

The report cites that this is due to the country’s advanced payments infrastructure, its economy’s place in the EU (ranked 10th in GDP), and an increased growth of debit, credit, and prepaid card usage as reported by banking and non-banking companies.

Most Austrian consumers rely on money and credit transfers. They account for 85.4% of transactions while card payments account for only 1.3% with debit cards seeing the most usage. This number is expected to grow with the installation of more POS (point of sale) systems and ATMs.

Debit, credit, and prepaid cards are expected to be increasingly adopted chiefly due to marketing, social media campaigns by card distributors, and the steady popularity of e-commerce. Some highlights of the report can be found here.