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Old Aug 2, 2010, 2:36 pm
  #7  
Okto
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: PHX
Posts: 623
Originally Posted by mia
Could you elaborate?
The banking system in Spain is made up of two distinct types of institutions, each accounting for roughly 50% of the market. One segment is formed by traditional deposit-based banks, publicly-traded with their own shareholders, in which Santander and BBVA are the 800-pound gorillas (there are a bunch of other small/medium sized banks and a few foreign banks of little consequence such as ING or Deutsche Bank).
The other 50% of the banking system is made up of something similar to a savings/loan thrift ("Cajas de Ahorros"), but these institutions are neither publicly traded, nor do they have discernible owners. Supposedly the depositors own the thrift, but in reality all decision-making is in the hand of a board appointed by the regional government (this translates into a lot of corruption, but that's not relevant right now for this discussion).

So, we have, essentially, Santander, BBVA and regional thrifts. All of them massively push their own Visa, MC or Maestro product. While there is stiff competition between them, there's no competition outside Visa/MC products.
It is common for banks to require having people direct deposit their pay check into a savings account before they are offered a credit card. It is also common for people to have their mortgage loan at the same institution where they have their savings account. So, banks manage to have very captive customers.
Most merchants have business relationships with the major banks, and, as expected, the banks incentivize the acceptance of their credit card products by the merchant. Once people get their bank-issued Visa/MC, there is little reason for them to go get an AMEX card, unless they are frequent travelers.

Separately, the average salary in Spain is ~ EUR 24,000/year. Most people treat their Visa/MC as debit cards and given their spending ability, they have little motivation to accrue points in an AMEX-style rewards card. I believe AMEX understands this and does not try to push their product on everybody like it does in the U.S. I remember seeing the application for the Platinum Card a few years ago and, in addition to being something like 6-8 pages long, requiring all sorts of documentation, it set a minimum income level of EUR 60,000 / year (not sure what it is today).
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