Plastic payments: the numbers keep rising - PayLife breaks the million barrier
PayLife press release 1/2/12
Photos of the press conference
With the popularity of card-based payment increasing unabated in Austria, 2011 was another
successful year for the market leader PayLife. The proliferation of PayLife payment cards has been
particularly strong, with a surge of 13.7% bringing the total to 1.1 million. Meanwhile, the number
of Maestro ATM cards serviced by PayLife has broken through another million barrier: some 8.1
million of the cards had found their way into Austrians' pockets by the end of 2011.
In terms of both transactions and sales, 2011 saw further increases in the usage of PayLife
cards (and Maestro debit cards in particular).
PayLife cards TRX
+2% Turnover
+0.7%
EUR 3.06 bn
Maestro
TRX +6.3% Turnover
+5.2%
EUR 16.7 bn
Prepaid cards: a success story
The rise of the PayLife prepaid card has been little short of meteoric, with growth exceeding
89%. Sales topped 260,000 in 2011, bringing the number of active PayLife prepaid cards now in
circulation to 340,000. The top seller at present is the Shopping Card de Luxe: on average, 4,800
of the voucher-style cards for the Shopping City Süd and Donau Zentrum malls were sold every day of
December alone.
“Already it's hard to imagine the everyday shopping experience without payment cards, as the figures show. On the contrary: whereas paper money used to be the norm, more and more people these days are turning to the flexibility of modern prepaid cards”, explains PayLife's Chief Executive Officer Peter Neubauer. “The trend has vindicated our decision to act as pioneers in the prepaid sector over recent years”, he continues. “We are already supplying our range to shopping centres in Germany, and we're planning to launch our card products on other national markets in 2012."
International acquiring
PayLife offers full support to merchants in nine countries, providing payment terminal,
acceptance and processing services in both the face-to-face and e-commerce fields. During 2011,
PayLife succeeded in doubling the number to over 1,060 terminals. Turnover in the international
arena has also reached the impressive level of €220 million.
Outlook
“As far as the prospects for cashless payments and PayLife in the new year are concerned, we
are holding some promising cards in every sense of the word”, says Neubauer. “We are looking at
additional increases of about 5% in both plastic card transactions and turnover during 2012”, he
believes. “PayLife is ideally placed to set the standard in the cards sector with some fresh
initiatives this year.”
PayLife as market leader and number 1 is the first choice for cashless payments in Austria. For
over 30 years PayLife takes care of comfortable, simple and secure paying by card and stands for
customer focus and reliability. PayLife offers comprehensive know-how in the card business and the
Bankomat POS Terminal for every sector and for all the most popular brands. With PayUnity, PayLife
is the only provider for e-commerce and POS payments from one source. PayLife. Bringing life to
your card.
Please address press enquiries to:
Angela Szivatz, 01 717 016 541
PayLife Bank GmbH
