Laser card market share

chop

Hi,

Since 2007 Irish banks have been gradually replacing Laser cards with Visa or Mastercard Debit cards. According to lasercard.ie:

Laser will be withdrawn from the market as and from 28th February 2014. After that date, Laser card sales will not be processed and shops will be required to cease accepting Laser.

Is there any current data available on how many active Laser cards are still out there?

The only data I can find online is that there were 1.5m of them in 2012, and that there will be zero next March.

I need to know if the number of them is significant enough that a new online business should support them.

Thanks

jimmii

Since I opened my shop in February I can recall three people who had Laser cards (our machine doesn't take laser so they stand out!!) two of those were AIB customers who had the new Visa debit cards but hadn't activated them yet and the other was a new card from Danske bank or someone like that. Only a relatively small sample obviously but gives an idea of what things are actually like on the street.

mneylon

I'd have to check our figures to see how many Laser transactions we're still doing, but I know that when we started accepting Laser a few years ago it had a significant impact on our sales.

Maybe ask your payment provider for some ballpark numbers?

mneylon

Checked on our end - the volume has been dropping and is now down to about 5%.