Introduction

The affluent consumer segment has always been an attractive target market for the financial services industry. This report looks at the current state of the premium card market, what affluent consumers expect from their payment cards, and the opportunities that exist for card issuers to tap into in the years to come.

Features and benefits

• Use these insights into the behaviour of affluent credit card customers across 20 countries to shape your acquisition strategy.
• Successfully target affluent credit card customers by understanding what they want and how they use payment cards
• Better target the niche affluent consumer segment by understanding successful strategies to approach new premium card customers
• See the size of the prize from winning new affluent customers, in 20 countries

Highlights

Perhaps unsurprisingly, affluent credit card customers generate higher average revenue per customer than mass market customers. From a revenue pool perspective, affluent customers generate 37% of total global credit card issuer revenue, despite only accounting for 30% of credit card customers.

Demand for premium cards is expected to be strong in the next 12 months, as indicated by Datamonitor's Premium Cards Opportunity Model. Overall, 11 million affluent customers are expected to become premium card customers in the next 12 months, equivalent to an 8.5% increase above the current premium card penetration level.

Traditional premium cards, which include gold and platinum cards, are slowly changing, and there have been many developments to leverage the high demand for premium cards among mass market customers. Some card issuers have moved to a new territory of premium cards, providing an extra level of benefits and exclusivity to affluent customers.

Your key questions answered

• How big is the premium card market, and how much revenue do these cards generate compared to the mass market?
• What are the key differences and why the affluent credit card customers behave differently to the mass market?
• What is the expected growth for the premium card market and where will the growth come from?
• What is the future of premium cards?