The Spanish credit card specialist Wizink, which last November acquired the Barclaycard business from Barclays in Portugal, is to scrap the Barclaycard brand and is sending a new Wizink credit card to each of its 500,000 customers in Portugal.
These new, curiously named credit cards will start to reach customers from next week, with current Barclaycards remaining active until October 10th, 2017, according to the Spanish bank which is owned by Banco Popular and US fund, Varde Partners.
In Portugal, Wizink now manages 700,000 card customers - 500,000 Barclaycard holders and 200,000 from the integration of credit and debit cards from Banco Popular.
The company has €860,000 million lent to its customers at stiff interest rates (Taxa Anual Nominal 16.60%.)
Wizink, run by Iñaki Perkins, acquired Barclaycard in Spain last November, and thereby doubled its card business to over three million customers giving the company €3.1 billion in card balances across the Iberian Peninsula.
"Barclaycard? This man's in no state to go shopping!"
