ATHENS — In the central market, hanging
above the trays of meat, is evidence that Greece’s
near bankruptcy last year is having an unexpected impact — shiny new
placards advertising that customers can now pay with debit and credit cards.
“If I like it or not, people are
asking for it,” said Christos Papoutsis, 57, a butcher here who finally yielded
to plastic money only last month. “If I don’t accept the cards, I will lose
sales.”
Economists do not generally see much to celebrate in the
shuttered banks or in the capital controls that are still in place, limiting Greeks to
cash withdrawals of 420 euros, or about $457, a week.
Yet experts say that these events have created an
unforeseen silver lining for this troubled country - the use of electronic transactions
could make it much harder for corruption to flourish. Many say the government
should act quickly with added incentives — like tax breaks linked to the use of
the cards — to take advantage of the moment.
“Once you get a
lot of people with a lot of cards, it becomes a snowball effect,” said Nikos
Vettas, an economist at Athens University and one of the authors of a recent
report on the subject, which estimated that under various scenarios Greece could
see billions more in tax revenues.
Greece has long been awash in cash, a state of affairs
that has facilitated the country’s huge shadow economy, estimated at 20 to 25
percent of its G.N.P. with as much as $12 billion in tax revenues being lost,
according to Costas Bakouris, the chairman of the Greek chapter of the
anticorruption organization, Transparency International.
But since July 2015, Greeks, unable to get their hands on
large amounts of cash, have been forced to use cards. At the same time, banks
have issued more than 1.2 million new debit and credit cards, many to older
people who had never used them before.
The use of cards does not come easy
for many Greeks. Critics say the government has in some ways encouraged such
behavior. Many Greeks pay their taxes in cash. And even quasi-government
agencies, like the water and electricity company, will take only cash if customers
pay their bills in local offices. Tourists often notice the country’s
attachment to cash when they visit its many museums, only one of which, the
Acropolis Museum, accepts cards.
On average, citizens in the European Union made 189 electronic
transactions a year in 2013, the most recent figures available. In Greece, the
average was just 17 per citizen.
But the events of the last few months, experts say,
have given Greece a unique opportunity to change all that and cut into the
country’s shadow economy.
Government officials are considering a broad package of
measures that could include making it mandatory for new businesses to accept
cards.
Tryfon Alexiadis, a deputy finance minister responsible
for Greek tax revenues, said that an increase in the use of cards could bring
several benefits, including getting taxes into government coffers much faster.
Bank officials say the change in behavior has been
drastic. In the last few months, the National Bank of Greece has given out
about 630,000 cards (the vast majority debit cards) and found that 90 percent
of them had been used at least once, according to Nelly Tzakou-Lambropoulou,
the general manager for retail banking.
Before the crisis fewer than 150,000 businesses even had
the terminals necessary to process card transactions. But with more and more
Greeks needing to use cards because they have no other way of getting to their
money, banking officials are optimistic that this will change fast.
At the Athens meat and fish market,
many customers said that they had gotten a debit card in the last few months
only as a security measure in case the banks closed again. One retiree said he considered the cards
“evil.” Behind such thinking, experts say, is a profound distrust of authority
and the fear of having one’s purchases recorded.
Vassilis Korkidis, the head of
Confederation of Commerce and Entrepreneurship, said such distrust was not hard
to understand. For instance, Mr. Korkidis said Greeks were asked in 2015 to pay
extra taxes for 2013. In 2009 the government gave incentives to Greeks to buy
new cars, prompting some to take advantage of the tax break and buy big cars.
Two years later, the government increased taxes for owners of big cars.
“People just believe that three
years down the road the government is capable of coming back and saying let me
see what you spent,” Mr. Vettas said. “The politicians don’t see how important
it is to establish trust with the people.”
