Cartes Bancaires Getting Started with i.CB
- Cartes Bancaires has just confirmed its intention to launch an electronic and mobile purse, named i.CB. This solutions should be deployed by end 2011-beginning 2012.
- Cartes Bancaires made this decision in July 2011 and has now received enough favourable feedbacks from the banks to confirm the launch of i.CB, the large-scale deployment of which should take place in 2012.
- i.CB will enable (fix or mobile) online payments using identifiers; it will also be equipped with a one-time authentication system. The customer will be able to include several “CB” or private label means of payments. It will be a mono-issuer product.
- Its architecture will allow for the integration of other services aside from payments (loyalty, mobile services, contactless services, etc.).
- This project comes in after several banking initiatives have been launched (including Crédit Agricole’s Kwixo or Crédit Mutuel Arkéa’s Pay2you). Nevertheless, i.CB is not trying to challenge these banks which could have to manage different projects of this kind simultaneously for some time to allow for the development of regular customer usage.
- However, this launch responds to non-banking players’ payment services (most of all, PayPal’s), inducing disintermediation unfavourable to the banks.