Welcome today announced the appointment of Luis de Azcoitia as Welcome's Country Manager for Spain and Portugal.
Luis de Azcoitia, who holds a Management degree and an MBA from Instituto de Empresa, spent the last 4 years in the payment services industry, working for First Data Iberica as Sales and Business Development Manager.
"The card war is now a reality. The strong competition among banks to gain clients and business is resulting in discount and promotion wars with high cost and uncertain return," said Luis de Azcoitia. "Welcome offers to financial institutions its XLS payment software to enrich the moment of purchase and design new differentiation campaigns for their customers."
"Spanish and Portuguese banks face deep changes in the industry coming from regulatory changes and the recent European harmonization policies," added Philippe Bontemps, EMEA Regional Director, Welcome. "We want to accompany them in this challenging moment as we have already done for other banks worldwide."
Despite the high number of point of sale terminals in Spain, cash still dominates at the moment of purchase. In 2005, credit and debit card spending combined accounted for only one-third of consumer spending.
"Neither cardholders nor merchants get real and differential benefits when using or accepting one card instead of another", added Azcoitia. "Welcome goes further than traditional loyalty programs and allows banks and savings institutions to create real-time promotional and cross-marketing campaigns, based on every single customer's behaviour."