Acceptance: Société Générale/CUP Partnership
- Chinese domestic card scheme CUP partnered with Société Générale to enable CUP cardholders to withdraw cash from ATMs of the French bank’s network in 14 African and European countries, as well as to pay in partner stores in eight countries. The park should be opened within a year.
- Société Générale will also issue RMB Yuan UnionPay domestic debit cards in China.
- Société Générale manages to become part of the duopoly of French partner banks of the first card scheme in the world. After unsuccessful with Cartes Bancaires, the Chinese scheme decided in 2005 to sign contracts with some of its member banks. To this day, CUP cards are accepted at Crédit Agricole/LCL and BPCE 20,000 ATMs. Its acceptance in stores is also planned but takes more time. Most likely, this accounts for the extension of CUP cards acceptance by the third French group.
- SG is the twelfth foreign retail bank to join the Chinese payment card network. In order to compete with the other large international card schemes, Visa and MasterCard, CUP signed agreements with several players of the payment card market in different countries: Aduno (Switzerland, 2012) Citi (Asia, March 2011), American Express (World, November 2010), MultiPay (Switzerland, November 2010), Interbank (Peru, November 2010), etc. Since its creation in 2002, this network carries on a direct acceptance policy on an international level through bilateral negotiations conducted country by country.