Citibank pulls the plug on its CitiConnect service

The news surprised its competitors, but at the same time pleased them. For several days employees of the bank have been informing e-stores that it no longer provides its CitiConnect service. One key reason behind this may be that it was not very popular. Since the beginning of 2002 the bank only managed to carry out 60,000 transactions worth a total of zł.8 million. "The decision was a result of our internal strategy which is to concentrate on developing Internet systems for settling transactions among companies," said Citibank's Piotr Karwiński. However, the CitiConnect service was showing some promise as the value of transactions doubled in the first half of the year in comparison with the whole of 2003, but its market share dropped from 5% to 2% over the same period. "It seems that the bank made use of neither its know-how nor its potential," said Allan Wodzyński, president of eCard - Citibank's competitor. (Puls Biznesu, pp. 1, 4) M.M.