OREANDA-NEWS. December 22, 2011. The GFK Ukraine agency has performed a research on factors that have been the most important to the clients receiving their salaries via plastic cards. In course of the salary-cardholders' polling, which was conducted in August-October 2011, it became clear that the well-developed network of ATMs and branches were more important for clients of banks' payroll projects rather than tariffs and financial terms of servicing.

According to the survey's results, 65% of surveyed salary cards' holders evaluate a bank by the width of its ATM network. At the same time, more than a half of clients believe that possibility of a close contact not only with ATMs, but with the bank itself is important - 50.4% of them named the ramified branch network as the main advantage of a servicing bank. The main characteristics of the bank which provides servicing of salary cards are:

1          Ramified ATM network 65,4%  

2          Wide branch network    50,4%  

3          Possibility to get discounts and bonuses while paying with a card         17,8%  

4          Possibility to get credit card for free     17,1%  

5          SMS and mobile banking          5,1%   

The GFK Ukraine's research also revealed the most popular payroll banks in Ukraine. According to the consumers' polling, the market leader is PrivatBank - more than 42% of respondents receive salary via its cards, second by the popularity of salary cards is Raiffeisenbank Aval - 11.7%, and the state-owned Oschadbank closes the top three "salary" banks with 5,5%.

Top 5 banks by cards that the Ukrainians receive salary on are:

1          PRIVATBANK   41,9%  

2          Raiffeisen BANK AVAL             11,7%  

3          OSCHADBANK            5,5%   

4          PROMINVESTBANK     3,8%   

5          UKRSOTSBANK           3,5%   

The study was proceded by GfK Ukraine in the August - October 2011. The sample is representative for the Ukrainian population older than 16 years by sex, region of residence and size of settlement. The total number of respondents was 3'000 including 1'012 of the salary cards' holders.

PrivatBank is the largest Ukrainian payment-cards' issuer and acquirer. Since 1996, PrivatBank has issued more than 197 million of plastic cards. To date, PrivatBank serves over 28.6 million of payment cards, its network includes 3'357 branches and outlets, 7'488 ATMs, 54'486 POS-terminals.