J.P. Morgan has become a principal member of the French payments network Cartes Bancaires CB, becoming the first U.S. bank to do so.
Having been granted this license, the bank plans to support the French payment method for merchant clients by the end of 2024, J.P. Morgan said in a press release emailed to PYMNTS and issued in Paris on Tuesday (March 5) local time.
“Our North Star is to enable our merchant clients to offer their customers a varied choice of payment options to suit their needs,” Ludovic Houri, co-head of EMEA Payments & Commerce Solutions at J.P. Morgan, said in the release. “Membership of Cartes Bancaires CB will help us take this to a whole new level in Europe and France in particular.”
Cartes Bancaires CB currently has 15 billion CB transactions per year by card or mobile phone, according to the press release.
By offering merchant clients acquiring services of Cartes Bancaires CB payment transactions, as it plans to do by the end of the year, J.P. Morgan aims to provide competitive transaction costs and leading local processing performance on debit card and credit card transactions, the release said.
This new offering will join the existing capabilities of the bank’s EMEA Payments business, which processes over $1 trillion of payments daily and supports merchant acquiring to more than 1,500 European clients, per the release.
On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2023, J.P. Morgan Payments processed a record number of card-not-present transactions in Europe. The firm processed 18.2 million transactions on Black Friday and 19.6 million on Cyber Monday — figures that were 7% higher and 17% higher, respectively, compared to the same days in 2022.
Together with processing payments, J.P. Morgan Payments offers treasury services, trade and working capital, card and merchant services capabilities to help its clients pay customers or employees, in different currencies, around the world.
“CB and J.P. Morgan share the same values, those that have made our respective organizations successful: the values of economic efficiency, innovation, inclusion and security,” Philippe Laulanie, CEO of Cartes Bancaires CB, said in the release. “The road that now opens before us will lead to numerous projects, which will bring real added value to the entire CB community.”