Citibank eyes rich Thais with Prestige

The card was previously launched in Australia, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore and the United States, with Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates being the next markets to have the global credit card, by the end of this year.
Sandeep Batra, head of credit cards and loans at Citibank Thailand, said Citibank’s insight research had found that 90 per cent of travellers globally had at least one credit card for spending overseas.
Moreover, in Thailand, the local unit of the bank has seen a rising trend of overseas travel by Thais, so the new card with global benefits and features should enable it to attract business from this category of customer.
The global platform of Citi Prestige will also benefit Thailand from the standpoint of inbound travel, as the country is a major destination for global travellers, while the Kingdom will be part of the new Asean Economic Community by the end of this year, which makes it a prime time to launch the card, Batra explained.
Thailand is a special market for Citibank, and one in which it has been active for 40 years. Even though the market has witnessed both growth and a slowdown in recent times, Citibank Thailand has seen growth in terms of credit-card spending, he said.
In the past few years, credit-card spending in Thailand has expanded by 10 per cent annually, and growth of 7 per cent was seen during the first nine months of this year.
Citibank Thailand’s card business has grown in line with the market trend, he said, adding that the market is expected to grow by 8-10 per cent this year.
For the new Citi Prestige card, the bank targets customers aged 30 and above with monthly income of at least Bt50,000, which the bank defines as the “affluent” segment among its clients
Affluent customers contribute more than 25 per cent of Citibank Thailand’s roughly 1 million credit-card users, and the segment has spending per head per card of Bt40,000 – against an average of Bt10,000 across all of its credit cards.
The bank targets issuing 30,000 Citi Prestige cards by the end of this year and that, with the global benefits that it offers, many existing customers will upgrade to the card, besides the new users that the bank hopes to attract.
Citibank Thailand claims a market share of more than 20 per cent of the affluent credit-cardholder segment in the country, Batra said.
He added that while co-branded credit cards remained an important strategy for Citibank, as partners could design benefits for targeted cardholders, having its own credit card meant Citibank Thailand could leverage the global platform to target customers as well.