If you don\’t have a free payment card, you are paying to use it. For shopping, or more commonly, for withdrawals. One day you will say to yourself, pay less, or don\’t want to pay at all, and will look around for a competitor. Most of the time, it\’s the banks. Then you will realize that there are only two issuers in this country: Visa and Mastercard.
Is there another one? A bank? Yes, but it is still issued by one of the above two companies. It does not matter whose logo is on the card,
it may have none. It doesn\’t matter because the information about the “owner” of the card is on the chip.
But the future situation seems to be that there will be competition. And there are already countless competitors coming from the same countries, most of them successful. Let me introduce you to China UnionPay.
And if you think this is a minor bug, beware, it is not.
In fact, this Chinese giant is making a turnaround that its American competitors can only dream of. At least according to transaction volume, which is estimated to account for 37% of the global market share; although Union Pay, founded in 2002,is still in its infancy,this is still more than enough. Moreover, the majority of its customers are in China. Six billion cards have been issued. And now they are heading to Europe.
So far, they will be partnering with Tribe Payments in the UK, and there are already rumors that two other entities are interested in the card.
What\’s in it for us?
Nothing yet if you live in the Czech Republic. It is not known that anyone in our country has any interest in this matter. Of course, if any organization, be it a bank or an insurance company, is interested in cooperation, they are not yet clamoring about it to the public. Negotiations will no doubt take place on a very secretive level.
I am no financial expert,but I believe that if UP offers better pricing and better service,both Visa and Mastercard will have a lot of competition to retain existing customers. But for us, this is probably the music of the future for now.
