摘要：The use of cards has witnessed a continuous evolution since 1995. The expansion of the banking offers with Electronic banking products represented another initiative, parallel with the card issue. The growth rate of the card market has accelerated together with the development of the market and of the consumer behavior in Romania. The development of the infrastructure and of the acceptance network has certainly been very important since they have determined the wide spread use of cards. At present, any private or legal person is engaged in commercial relationships involving financial transactions. Under the circumstances, the electronic payments have a major role practically representing the transactions of the future both at the national and the cross-frontier level. The financial institutions have reached a more acceleration segmentation of the card portfolio and they have begun to focus more and more on the services and benefits beyond the payment instruments. Meanwhile, the card owners have become more and more educated and sophisticated knowing what to ask for in terms of cards. Moreover, most of the financial institutions have adapted their network in order to accept chip cards. The number of the chip cards will increase on the Romanian market due to their effectiveness as far as the security of the transactions is concerned. The same will happen in the case of the co-branded cards which ensure the clients' fidelity. These will seek to obtain as many advantages as possible from the different types of cards. At the same time, they will concentrate on the niche products, business cards either for shopping or for the payment of public services. Romanians have started using the co-branded cards which are eventually still credits. Their number has rapidly increased to 300,000. The tendency to use co-branded cards for ordinary payments will become more prominent as long as the dealers and the issuing bank will think of more and more benefits attached to these cards which will finally lead to an increase in the number of card transactions. In addition, banks have recently negotiated client discounts with more retailers
