It seems that Diners Club, one of the three payment organisations operating in Poland, will leave our market. As reported by one of the readers of cashless.pl, the company started sending out new service regulations, from which it can be deduced that it is slowly getting ready to do so. "The new regulations include a point on Diners Club's ability to terminate the agreement if they decide to stop providing services," our reader wrote.

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And indeed, on Diners Club's website, you can find the new regulations, which will become effective on 28 March this year. The company reserves there the possibility to terminate the agreement with two months' notice in the situation when the management decides to stop providing payment services. In these circumstances, customers will be required to repay the entire debt, if any, on the card account.

A few days ago, it turned out that Diners Club stopped issuing new cards in Poland. In an interview with cashless.pl, Paweł Pomianowski, President of Diners Club Polska said that it was the decision of the company's Austrian shareholder. "Currently, we are not accepting applications for new cards for individual or business customers. However, customers who were previously issued cards may use them in line with the existing principles, they are covered by insurance, can collect miles, enter airport lounges, etc", said the president of DCP.

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According to cashless.pl sources, the Austrian DCBank AG, a shareholder of the Polish Diners Club, is changing its strategy and the recent decisions are the result of that. Various options are being considered, such as a merger of the Polish company with the Slovak one (it was announced two years ago, but the deal has not been finalised) or a sale of shares to a third party. However, it appears that the most likely option is to stop serving customers from Poland. The discontinuation of issuing new cards and the introduction of provisions in the regulations on the possibility to terminate contracts already concluded due to the discontinuation of services clearly indicate this.

Diners Club specialises in issuing premium, credit and charge cards. So far, it has been one of the three payment organisations whose cards were available to Polish customers, but with a market share much smaller than the competition (Mastercard and Visa together have over 99% of that share).