Some Countries Want More Credit Card Competition
| October 5, 2009 |
If you think that the United States is the only country working on credit card reform, think again. There are many countries around the world where credit cards take center stage when it comes to politics. With that said, not all countries are looking to go the same route that the U.S. took and some are even trying to grow credit card competition to offer their citizens more opportunity to access credit. In this case one of those countries is Brazil.
So why would anyone want to grow competition when it seems like we are in the middle of a world economic downturn? For Brazil, increased competition would not only allow more consumers to access credit, but it would also get more money flowing within the country. At the moment, there are only two credit card operators that have an exclusive agreement with both Visa and MasterCard. With this agreement, these two companies have a combined market share of just over ninety percent and also authorize any merchant or issuer transaction.
Wanting to strengthen the usage of both credit cards and debit cards in Brazil and force operators to share networks is the ultimate goal of any measure being passed. With this there seems like an additional push to also increase transparency, which on any case seems like what many other countries including the United States is moving toward.
| Share | Tweet |
