Visa extends battle against cash to tax payments

Frequent, low-value payments are becoming bankers’ new target, in a bid to persuade clients to use cards instead of cash, by investing more in card acceptance infrastructure.

Visa, one of the main international card issuers operating on the Romanian market, is seeking new battlefields in the fight against its main “enemy” – cash, considering that card payments are still marginal. This year Visa is seeking to open up the market to tax payments by card.

“We will focus on the town halls in county capitals and on those in Bucharest’s six sectors at first,” says Catalin Cretu, general manager for Romania of Visa Europe. For the time being, only 23 of the 47 municipalities in the targeted segment accept payment by card at the Points of Sale set up at the counters. As for online card payments, things are even worse: only four municipalities accept payment, with Bucharest’s 3rd sector having confirmed interest in the project last week.

Cretu says the four city & town halls that allow the payment of local taxes online include large city halls, such as Arad and Timisoara, as well as small ones – the Campia Turzii town hall. The Baia Mare town hall broke the ice on this niche last year, and developed an online payment solution with a local software developer.

Visa initiated this project countrywide as part of Visa Forum, with 13 partner banks involved.

All banks will make offers to the city, town halls and sector halls, both for installing POS-es and for the online application.

For instance, the application developed by the Baia Mare town hall allows taxpayers to register based on their personal identification number, after which they can see their debt-related data. The system allows the payment of taxes, fines, and of parking tickets.

Visa created a special section on its website to promote tax payment by card and made a nine-minute advert presenting the experience of the Baia Mare town hall.

Cretu says the card industry’s growth potential is unaltered, considering that cash payments continue to account for a very large share of overall payments.