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.
A grain of intelligence has inserted itself into the government's plans for the short-term lettings market as booking sites such as Airbnb and Booking.com soon will be obliged only to list properties that are 'Alojamento Local' licensed.
This simple move will wipe out a major part of the illegal lettings economy, to which the government has pretended to object but in fact has encouraged by allowing illegal lettings to operate with only token State interference.
An article today in postal.pt questions what has gone wrong at Faro airport and who is responsible for the delays in completing the refurbishment that leaves tourists weaving their way through the mess as the peak season looms.
The ambitious and long overdue airport refit aims to cater for a maximum of 12 million passengers a year with the 2017 target of 8 million already well on the way to being met.
The Assistant Secretary of State for Finance, Mourinho Félix, has been strutting his stuff in the US and persuading CNBC television viewers that Portugal is doing well and the rating agencies are having an increasingly hard time justifying their 'junk' ratings for Portugal.
"I would say that the three credit rating agencies (who attribute a junk rating to Portugal) will find it increasingly difficult to explain how and why they maintained this rating for an extended period of time, when Portugal in 2017 is very different to Portugal in 2014," said Mourinho Félix.
Revenue from tourism in Portugal increased in February this year to €677.5 million, a 13% increase over the same month in 2016, according to a statement issued by the Office of the Secretary of State for Tourism.
The Bank of Portugal data for the first two months of 2017 show total revenue at €1.362 billion, 15.2% above January and February last year.
Notaries and Conservatórios soon will have to include bank account and cheque numbers used in property purchases, if Portugal adopts new EU regulations, according to a report in Jornal de Negócios.
The Tax Authority will be keen to thwart money laundering by making it easier to identify the money trail used to buy property. The move is part of a package of new regulations under the catch-all excuse attributing the rules to ‘new European guidelines to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.’
The telecoms regulator’s March report contains details of fines levied against operators for some of the most blatant cases of deception and customer abuse yet recorded in this overpriced sector.
NOS was fined €210,000 for aggressive commercial practices and for providing customers with completely false information about services and prices as well as non-compliance with its legal obligations related to the termination of contracts.
The Court of Leiria has sentenced a former president of the parish council in Famalicão da Nazaré for two crimes of embezzlement.
Abilio Romão received a four year sentence which was suspended, to the anger and astonishment of locals seeing a politician in a position of trust, walking free despite a conviction for the theft of parish funds.
