The FINANCIAL — Bank of Georgia together with Visa is now enabling Georgians to purchase products from McDonald’s restaurants using contactless payment. With its market share amounting to 55% of total card payments, this new move by the Bank is contributing to the development of contactless payment. A special offer has been launched for the holders of Bank of Georgia’s Express Cards.
From 1 December, with every tenth transaction made via POS terminal Express Card holders will get a GEL 5 Cashback. The minimum payment sum is GEL 5. “All holders of an Express Card are automatically involved in this campaign. Those who do not yet have this card can get one from any Express service center free of charge,” said Irakli Gilauri, Bank of Georgia CEO, the country’s leading bank.
There are more than 400 000 Express Cards in a circulation currently.
Fast and safe payment system for customers of McDonald’s became available with the help of the new generation of POS terminals introduced by Bank of Georgia. The average duration of the payment process is 8 seconds.
“The fact that payment was only possible by cash was an inconvenience for our customers. Offering the option of payment by card will increase the number of our customers. The most interesting factor is that if a customer’s expenditure is below GEL 45 then entering their pin code is not needed at all,” said Temur Chkonia, businessman and founder of McDonald’s in Georgia.
“Development of contactless and cashless payments in the country is one of the main priorities of Georgian banks. Today’s event is a good example of this. Every bank is interested in promoting card usage. As a result, all activities are aimed at this. Georgia was one of the first countries out of 80 where contactless payment was introduced. There are only a couple of banks involved in this system and we hope that others will switch to it soon,” Irina Kamkhadze, Visa’s regional manager for the Caucasus, told The FINANCIAL.
Kamkhadze describes contactless payment as the most modern, safe, fast, and reliable payment system around today.
“Technically it was a large volume project. There were quite a lot of technical issues to be resolved. As a result, this project took about 9 months to complete. Plastic card payments have increased by 5% in 2013 compared with last year. That’s a pretty high rate. In general, every culture is still dominated by cash payments. However, through joint effort non-cash payments are showing a gradual increase. We strive to offer the most suitable products for clients in order to make POS terminal usage more active,” she said.
According to NBG, the number of transactions has increased by more than 1 million from September 2012 to September 2013. As of the end of the third quarter of the current year the number amounted to 5,516,330, up from 4,489,178 in September 2012. Cash withdrawal was also dominating a year ago, as it occupied 60% out of the total amount of transactions. By comparison, this year’s data shows a 3% reduction in cash withdrawals.
4,489,178 is the number of transactions as of September 2012, out of which 2,694,446 (60%) were made up of ATM withdrawals.
The share of cash in Georgia’s GDP, as of the end of June 2013, was equal to 6.9%, compared to a figure of 7.8% three years ago.
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