Sixty-three per cent of the respondents in the Mena region do not own a credit card, according to a recent online poll.

The sample consisted of 2,677 respondents when filtered to exclude results derived from respondents below 20 years of age, said social media site Netlog. In the poll that ran for 24 hours, 1695 respondents answered negatively to owning a credit card.

“Two-thirds of our audience at Netlog are locals, so these polls reflect the tastes and habits of the indigenous and non-transient population in the region,” says Timothy Bataillie, managing director for the Mena region at Massive//Media, the media group behind Netlog.

“It is one of the very few social platforms available where ‘locals’ can be engaged effectively through their mother tongue.”

The results of the survey were relatively similar across all countries, except for the UAE which stood marginally on its own with a nearer to even split.

The remainder of Mena countries (excluding Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE) showed an incidence of 32 per cent in credit card ownership, an understandably lower figure that is expected to arise when these three larger markets are removed from the picture.

“Credit card ownership is a fundamental backbone in industries such as e-commerce and carries also various other implications on the modern consumer’s lifestyle,” said Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh, special projects manager at Massive//Media.

“Financial institutions have not yet convinced the locals of this region on the value and versatility of use that this piece of plastic makes possible,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service