Press releases

On January 6, 2010 Belavia Belarusian Airlines joint with the system of e-payment “Skarbnik” and Public Corporation “BPS- Bank” introduced a new for the Belarusian market service of air tickets purchase by credit cards on the web- site www.belavia.by.

More than 2000 air tickets have been acquired for the last 3 months and the payment for this tickets was made by credit cards issued by banks of more than 50 countries of the world. The leaders have become the citizens of Great Britain who paid 19% of all air tickets. More than 17% of purchases were made by our eastern neighbors from Russia, 10% from Germany. The 4-th and the 5-th places are divided between the Italians and the Belarusians- each have 9%, and the clients from the USA have acquired 6 % of the total amount of the air tickets sold through the web- site www.belavia.by.

More than a half of the plastic bank cards (54%), owing to which the Belarussians made payments were issued by Priorbank. On the second place is Belvnesheconombank with its 18%, on the third place is BelSwissBank with 6 %. The rest of the banks have less than 5 % each for the payments by credit cards. 74% of the total amount of the cards are the cards of the International payment system VISA. Besides popular VISA Electron (8 %), VISA Classic (58%) and VISA Gold (18%) the payment was made by the owners of the bank plastic cards of the premium segment VISA Platinum (4 %), VISA Signature ( 9 times) and VISA Infinite ( 3 times).

The percentage of the cards of the MasterCard payment system is 26%, the main quantity of which is MasterCard Standard (63%). MasterCard Gold and MasterCard Corporate forms 12% each of the general amount of the cards of this payment system, and prestige cards MasterCard Platinum is 10%. The card of the exclusive level MasterCard World Signia were used only twice.

According to the Deputy Director General Igor Tcherginets the new service has become very popular among the users, only the 10-th part of the passengers who have acquired tickets through the Internet have plastic cards issued by the Belarusian banks. This is partly explained by the lack of habit to pay in the on-line mode for the goods and services and we make the efforts to change the situation. He also added that a big advertising campaign has been started, including advertisement in the Internet, on radio, outdoor advertising, etc.