Bank Islam targets 300,000 Team Harimau cardholders

PETALING JAYA: Bank Islam expects to issue 300,000 Team Harimau visa debit card-i in the next 12 months.

For
each new card issued, Bank Islam will contribute RM2 to the Football
Association of Malaysia (FAM) fund, said its director of business
development Khairul Kamarudin.

He said if the target is achieved, a total of RM600,000 will be chanelled to the FAM fund.

Khairul added that 0.3 per cent of each RM1,000 retail purchase made
by the debit cardholder will also be contributed to the fund.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

"Our partnership with FAM serves as the best platform to launch our
branding exercise as we hope to penetrate the younger generation
market," he said after the launch of the card yesterday.

The Team Harimau visa debit card-i was unveiled by FAM vice-president Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah yesterday.

Khairul said with an array of exclusive benefits for cardholders,
Bank Islam is confident of good response from young Malaysians.


Cardholders will also benefit from, among others, the card's
strategic partnership with sports retailer Al-Ikhsan, which will offer
up to a 20 per cent discount for purchases at its 121 stores nationwide.

Bank Islam chairman Datuk Zamani Abdul Ghani said the bank is
projecting debit card retail spending to rise by about 40 per cent to
RM350 million this year.

The increase will be spurred by its
new products, growing promotions and customer awareness on the
convenience of using debit cards in payment transactions.

Since the launch of its visa debit card-i in February 2011, the bank has issued 1.3 million cards, he said.

"There is an increasing push to promote cashless transactions in
Malaysia and we are using the strategy to co-brand cards to encourage
the younger market segment to use this convenience," said Zamani.

Meanwhile, Visa Malaysia country manager Stuart Tomlinson said debit
card spending in Malaysia has really taken off over the past four years
with a 50 per cent increase year-on-year.

Online purchases are also on the rise, he said, adding that owning a debit card can facilitate such transactions conveniently.

Tomlinson said an e-commerce survey conducted by Visa found that last
year, 68 per cent of those surveyed had used Visa cards for online
transactions while 80 per cent had shopped online.