OREANDA-NEWS. May 12, 2011. The Association of Lithuanian Banks starts an educational campaign designated to encourage people to use payment cards to pay for purchases and services more often. Though the residents of the country have over 4 million cards, the investigations show that due to the lack of information and various existing fears, Lithuanians use this payment alternative two times rarer than average EU residents, reported the press-centre of Ukio bankas.

"Investigations show, that the main reasons preventing from more active payment cards usage is the lack of information about them – how they work, whether it is safe to use them for payments, how to control own funds. So, implementing this campaign, we wish to answer the questions, the people are interested in, to provided more information on the everyday use of the cards”, - said Stasys Kropas, President of Association of Lithuanian Banks, initiating the campaign.

According to him, the level of settlements by payments cards is disproportionally low and their popularization campaign would help to increase electronic payments on the whole. "The cards themselves do not need to be popularized as the residents of Lithuania very often have not one card, though use them only for 2 or 3 transactions a month. According to the cards usage we are behind our Estonian neighbours 4 times, Latvians -1.5 times and EU average – more than 2 times. It is obvious that Lithuanians do not take advantage of the settlement means they own. We expect to reduce this gap, popularizing safe, fast and convenient means of payment”, - said S. Kropas, commenting statistics of payments provided by the Central Bank of Europe.

According to the President of the Association of Lithuanian Banks, the banks have introduced this objective to the bank of Lithuania, it was discussed that popularization of payment cards and other electronic means alternatives will allow the banks to maintain lower fees of these services. The settlement by payment cards is useful for the clients, as it helps to perform settlements in convenient and safe manner: keeping PIN code properly and safely, and blocking a card in case of loss it is practically impossible to use the stranger’s card, card account statements help to control own budget and the balance may be checked by anyone who has a mobile telephone at hand.

On the basis of data provided by the banks of Lithuania, a number of payment cards in the country issued in recent years, remains quite stable, first quarter of this year their number amounted to over 4.2 million. According to the data of 2011 first quarter, the turnover of the cards was LTL 6.94 billion – 10.5 percent higher than the same period last year; 5.78 billion or 83 percent of the transactions was cash withdrawal in ATMs. Presently, 1.5 thou ATMs work in the country and it is possible to use a card for payments in almost 37 thousands points of sale.

Educational campaign for settlements by payment cards popularization was initiated by the Association of Lithuanian Banks and all its members, issuing payment cards. For organization of the campaign a consortium of creative agency Ogilvy, communication consultants VRP I Hill &Knowlton and media planning agency Mediahouse was chosen.