Cobranding: La Banque Postale and Western Union to Launch a New Card
- Beginning of April, La Banque Postale and Western Union, strengthened their partnership and launched a new bank card displaying traditional account-related features as well as Western Union’s “Gold!card” customer loyalty program.
- The cardholders can for instance perform quick funds transfers (instant identification at the counter and availability of the amount a few minutes after confirmation of the payment order in one of the 445,000 Western Union points of sales located in 200 countries). They can also benefit from promotional offers and discounts on transfers’ costs through using customer loyalty points, and receive an SMS for free to be informed of the payment.
- As about 60% of La Banque Postale network now offers Western Union’s service, this bank has become one of the largest funds transfer network in France.
- In an especially competitive market, La Banque Postale and Western Union aim at strengthening the loyalty of their customers.
- The P2P funds transfer market is valued at 400 billion dollars per year (+10% per year on average since 2002), among which eight billion are originated from France which has become the 5th funds issuer in the world, particularly to Africa.
- Since the transposition of the PSD in 2009, several banking and non banking players have positioned on this market. The two world leaders in funds transfers, Western Union and MoneyGram, have significantly extended their network to players which used to be excluded from the traditional distribution network (Cash Converters stores, travel agencies, newsagents, newspaper stalls, etc.). The banking sector seems to have more trouble positioning itself on this market mostly because the recipients are often underbanked. Also, new players have recently entered this fast growing market: Transcash, for instance, with Visa reloadable card bundles available in several points of sales.