After having successfully launched e-Card in Iceland where it increased its market share by 10% in a very saturated card market in less than two years, Spron is now about to make an assault on Nordic countries and is looking for potential partners in the region seeking to develop the credit card market.

"Scandinavian markets have the same very crowded credit card market characteristics as Iceland, intense competition between banks, highly sophisticated markets, very high card usage", said Kristjan Hardarson, executive vice president at Spron. "Spron aims at proposing something new and exciting in the region and at having e-Card become the preferred credit card brand. To achieve this objective, we will leverage our current active partnership with Welcome and their XLS payment technology."

Nicolas Lefort, regional manager for Nordic countries at Welcome added: "e-Card is really focused on getting the most out of electronic money and enhancing payment to provide cardholders an exciting experience at the moment of payment. We are pleased to contribute our products and expertise to this unique payment tool."

Enhanced payment technology gives Spron and retailers more flexibility in granting awards; they can base cash back rewards in real time, on consumer spending in a given period, volume or frequency of purchase. In Iceland, for example, e-Card offers cardholders 0.5% cash back from the bank and additional 0.65% to 15% cash back from retailers. Cardholders can spend their cashback anywhere among 200 merchants participating in the e-Card program.

Card spending is now about 30% above average in Iceland, and as of last year, transaction numbers were running more than 40% above average.