team spirit - Bankier.pl

Cards for
young people
Security – a focus
of innovative
products
tomers can access their account around the clock (indoor
ATMs, TelefonB@nking and OnlineB@nking, MobileB@nking).
Credit cards with the possibility to make instalment payments
offer customers additional liquidity.
In September 2005 we abolished the account maintenance fee
for student accounts and accounts for young people if these
had debit balances. In line with this policy, the BankCard with
the Maestro function is now being offered to students free of
charge. This measure of Bank Austria Creditanstalt is designed
to support the education of the younger generation of customers
by not imposing additional financial burdens on them.
The remaining target groups used our customer loyalty programmes
which comprise ticket services for selected events, a
bonus points programme, the InvestorsCircle, the MegaCard
and Club Suxess.
In the area of payment transactions we continued to receive
high satisfactory ratings above all from our business customers.
However, revenues, including those from the growing
volume of payments within the EU, declined. The payment
transactions environment is currently characterised by legal
changes: as of 1 January 2006 the limit for EU transfers executed
at the same price as domestic transfers was raised from
€ 12,500 to € 50,000. The Austrian National Bank modified
the reporting requirements for foreign exchange transactions;
changes included the abolition of the foreign transfer-related
reports for statistical purposes. Legal requirements for combating
money laundering and terrorism financing (implementation
of a recommendation by the Financial Action Task Force)
are being appraised by experts. The new legal provisions,
especially the new legal framework for an EU-wide uniform
payments system, will have far-reaching implications for both
banks and their customers in the coming years.
In our card business we adopted the innovative products of
the credit card companies with which we cooperate. BA-CA
introduced VISA Electron Prepaid, the first rechargeable credit
card, at the end of 2004. This product is ideal for young people
already using the BankCard (e.g. for travelling), since only
the amount stored on the card can be used and it is ideally
suited for entering the realm of non-cash transactions – without
any danger of the account being overdrawn. A focus of
innovative products in 2005 was security: all cards with the
Maestro function (BankCard and MegaCard) are equipped
with a digital signature function, or cards can be exchanged
for others with this function. The Maestro SecureCode (MSC)
is a system offered by Europay Austria for making secure payments
in the Internet; this is offered as an additional function
of the Maestro card. BA-CA MasterCard was also equipped
with this function and consequently permits secure payments
to be made via the Internet. This has gained high acceptance
worldwide.
62 Austrian Customer Business
As of the end of 2005, 541,000 credit cards had been issued
to our account-holders: with a share of 69 % (374,300 cards),
the VISA Classic Card, one of the most frequently offered
credit cards, accounts for the bulk of total cards issued. The
remaining 31% comprises Diners Club Card and MasterCard
customers. In 2005, VISA-SERVICE Kreditkarten AG, a subsidiary
in which the bank has a majority holding, achieved a
turnover of € 4 bn (+ 8 %) with some 950,000 cardholders
and more than 92,000 merchants in Austria; Austrian merchants
accounted for € 2.9 bn (+ 7 %) of total turnover. The
company succeeded in adding about 2,000 new merchants to
those already under contract. VISA-AUSTRIA is offering cardholders
the “Verified by VISA” payment system to provide
additional security for customers who order goods and services
via the Internet and pay by credit card. 45,000 cardholders
had signed up for this secure system by the end of 2005. VISA
has a market share of about 70 % in the student customer
group, and BA-CA is supporting efforts in this area with its target
group initiatives.
In 2005, BA-CA joined the VISA Multinational Corporate
Programme. This enables it to offer international corporate
customers a worldwide payment system within its own banking
network in CEE. The VISA Multinational Corporate Card,
issued with a standardised design within the Group, in addition
to its payment function therefore also offers comprehensive
insurance cover, detailed evaluation possibilities on a
Group basis with the help of the Management Information
System, and the individual definition of limits per employee by
the company.
E-business – a success story
The bank’s e-business has continued to flourish. 470,000 of
our private customers used OnlineB@nking in 2005, with
increasing frequency: every customer on average logs on to
the bank’s website in the Internet five times a month to settle
his payment transactions. Our customers use OnlineTr@der to
settle about 10,000 securities orders via the Internet each
month. To make it easier for our customers
Further information is
available (in German) to verify the secure website, the log-on for
at http://sicherheit. OnlineB@nking is now on a separate site.
ba-ca.com
We have also enhanced the electronic signature
with the TAN procedure: the application of the iTAN
offers extensive protection against the abuse of electronic signatures
in connection with phishing, trojans and spyware.
MobileB@nking by means of a mobile phone was originally
developed together with Hutchison 3 and is now available to
all providers. Customers can log-on to WAP-B@nking and
MobileB@nking at https://mobile.ba-ca.com. The number of
customers visiting the MobileB@nking site doubled in 2005.