OREANDA-NEWS. July 09, 2010. According to BCR Chisinau, it’s the first step of BCR Chisinau towards the emission of such kind of cards. Soon, BCR Chisinau will announce the issue of its own Visa chip cards. As the head of BCR Chisinau Cards and Alternative Channels Department Julian Marinescu said, the acceptance of smart-cards technologies confirms that BCR Chisinau corresponds to advanced security standards of banking operation.

Chip cards are safer in comparison to those with magnetic stripe. The falsification of such chip is almost impossible. Visa chip card allows to safely authorizing offline the transactions using the parameters set directly on the chip by the issuing bank. BCR Chisinau possesses more than 3.5 thousand active cards and a network of 34 ATM in Chisinau. BCR Chisinau began to operate in Moldova as universal bank on October 22nd, 1998, with charter capital of 24 million leis. At present, the charter capital amounts to 342.75 million leis.

The bank network includes about 10 sales points and 40 ATMs, serving more than 5 thousand clients – individuals and legal persons. The single shareholder of BCR Chisinau is BCR. In 2006 the Austrian financial group Erste has bought the majority stock of shares of BCR S.A. Banca Comarciala Romana (Commercial Bank of Romania) is the leader on financial service market of Romania.

As of December 31st, 2009, its assets exceeded 64.5 billion Romanian leis (EUR16 billion). It’s the leader on the number of clients – more than 4.6 million individuals and companies, and in crediting and savings area, with market share above 22% and 21%, respectively.