Plastic card use in Czech Republic

According to the data by the Association for Banking Cards (ABK) by the end of March 2008 banks in the Czech Republic issued 8.74 million payment cards which means 650,000 increase over the same period of the preceding year.
By the end of last year banks as well as other financial institutions in the Czech Republic issued over 10 million payment cards with 3.2 million being credit cards.

In order to attract more customers to use their cards banks are enabling different kind of services and incentives including special cards issue. Cooperating with their business partners banks issue specific cards with rebate features.
Interestingly but Czechs prefer withdrawing cash from ATMs. In the first quarter Kc143 billion were withdrawn by consumers in the Czech Republic.

In an attempt to enhance security level of the payment cards banks are adding chips to magnetic strips on their cards.
At the end of March 2008 6.2 million chip cards were issued in the Czech Republic against 3.5 million at the end of 2006.
Meantime the domestic market is dominated by debit cards.