By Walied Abd Al-Azim and Raghda Hilal The Daily News Egypt has sat down with Himanshu Shrimali, head of retail banking at the Arab African International Bank, to discuss the bank's latest products and credit cards. What are the types of credit cards the bank offers? We have introduced various types of credit cards, so we offer both Visa and MasterCard. For Visa, we offer classic gold and platinum, for MasterCard we offer classic cards, and we are going to launch Titanium MasterCards in July. Basically, we offer a full range of credit cards from both Visa and MasterCards. There are only few banks in the market who offer both. What are the minimum and maximum limits for the new Titanium cards? There is no maximum limit, but the minimum will be EGP 15,000. What are the features of these new Titanium cards? There will be many new features that will be loaded on the card, such as cash back and balance transfer as we have targeted to make it the most powerful card in the market. What is the bank market share for the credit cards? The market share is 2% for Visa. What is the current total number of clients for the credit cards at the bank? We have about 25,000 credit cards clients. What is the safety system in the bank concerning credit cards? We have internal credit policies, and according to those policies we check for the credibility of the customers and accordingly we offer them the cards. Have you have any plans in the future to participate with other companies other than Visa and MasterCards to launch cards? No, we are dealing with MasterCard and Visa in the market, with plans to enhance their visibility in the future, with the view to potentially launching them in greater numbers. What are the targeted fields or customers the bank is focusing on in the next period for the credit cards? Are there any new types of clients the bank targeted to service them in the cards? We continue targeting the customers who want and can hold those cards, but we don't have any plans to change this in the future. Are there any plans to restructure the current credit card system? No, because we don't feel the need for any restructuring in our cards. At the moment, we are currently focusing on launching the new "Titanium" card with its new features. Do you have any other types of credit cards that will be launched other than Titanium? Up until now we don't have any plans other than to launch these new cards but maybe in the future we can launch more and more cards and types, and also we offer for Master and Visa debit cards. What are the main benefits to all credit cards holders and secure system by purchasing online? In terms of our secure internet shopping, AAIB offers a "VBV" password which is required for conducting online transactions using any AAIB Visa credit card. It provides an extra layer of security for online transactions, so it's is the safest way to shop online. We also launched a unique feature to the market called "ADS", which is Activation During Shopping. The cardholder will have their own password while shopping at participating online merchants, at no additional cost. Second, concerning the security of the card, we also send SMS alerts for every transaction on all customers' cards. Our pricing is very attractive because of the limits of our cards are the highest in the market. And concerning the AAIB Visa Platinum pay Wave credit card, it offers the holder a high credit limit and acceptance at more than 29 million worldwide merchants. AAIB was the first bank in Egypt to issue international credit cards. We maintain our pioneering advantage in this market by giving our clients the best terms on their cards while entitling users to a variety of unique privileges What are the rules taken by the bank if there are any customers who lose his card? We have call centre service 24 hours, 7 days of the week , which customers can use to report lost cards either by phone or through the bank system.
