Yapı Kredi reached a credit card brand sharing agreement with Vakıfbank, the largest partnership of its kind signed in the Turkish credit card market so far
On 7 November 2007, Yapı Kredi Bank (YKB) reached a partnership agreement with Vakıfbank to share its “World” credit card brand. The agreement, targeted to be finalized by end of first half of 2008, sets a new benchmark in the market by forming the largest partnership in terms of number of credit cards and issuing volume.
As of end of October 2007, YKB is the leader in the credit card market in terms of both number of cards with 18.5% market share and issuing volume with 23.4%* market share. Among the three state-owned banks, Vakıfbank is the 2nd largest player in terms of number of cards, with 5.5% market share and the largest player in terms of issuing volume, with 2.5%* market share. The two banks have complementary credit card customer profiles.
The partnership will be bringing together YKB’s 6.6 mln “World” credit cards with Vakıfbank’s 1.9 mln credit cards under the “World” brand. Consequently, total number of “World” branded credit cards in the market will exceed 8.5 mln (including the cards within the framework of partnership with Millenium Bank). YKB expects the number of “World” branded cards to exceed 10 mln through additional potential partnerships that are currently under evaluation.
Vakıfbank aims to speed up its growth in the credit card market through teaming up with Turkey’s largest and one of the most innovative credit card platform, “World”. Following the signing of the agreement between the parties and the completion of the systems integration, Vakıfbank will be joining in YKB’s World platform as a program partner and Vakıfbank credit cards will be replaced by new ones with the “World” logo. As a result, Vakıfbank’s customers will be able to benefit from a wide array of premium quality World Card services such as installment purchases, redeemable free points accumulating with purchases and merchant campaign offerings within YKB’s wide loyalty network of ~140,000 World merchants. YKB’s total network includes ~197,000 merchants and ~234,000 POS machines..
Through partnering with Vakıfbank, YKB expects to further increase its card penetration, offer a stronger value proposition with a sizeable partner, which in turn is expected to strengthen the brand image of Worldcard as well as YKB’s negotiating power with the merchants. Leveraging Vakıfbank’s long-standing relationship with SMEs and state institutions/employees, this new partnership is expected to generate further cross-sell and new business development opportunities for YKB.
(*)Cumulative as of end of October 2007
İstanbul, 8 November 2007.
Enquiries:
Yapı Kredi Investor Relations
Tel: (90) (212) 339 7647
Email: yapikredi_investorrelations@yapikredi.com.tr
Yapı Kredi / 08 Nov 2007