Banks have good reason to pursue a stake in bank credit card market.

Debit or Credit transactions are the fastest-growing segment of non-cash payments.

If banks do not participate, they are ceding enormous volumes of global transactions and losing the opportunity for scale efficiencies in card payments as a whole.

Card payment as a product, cards are also the only instrument with export potential (compared to credit transfers and direct debits), and are a less capital-intensive retail-development product than, for instance, branches.

Emerging payment technologies

Although banks are clearly in a strong position to survive and thrive in card payments overall, and in cards in particular, emerging payment means could favour non-bank and other non-traditional players.

These new technologies and business models (for examples, NFC Contactless, Mobile Payments Market) could ultimately complement or rival cards.