Issuing: Germany Issuing JCB Cards Co-badged with girocard
- In 2012, German banks and saving institutions will start issuing national girocard cards co-badged with the Japanese network JCB. The Japan credit card company has just signed a framework agreement with the German domestic scheme DK (Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft). Until then, JCB used to be mainly an acceptance brand for Japanese cardholder in Europe.
- The co-badged card will include specific services for German customers. It complies with the SCF and will expand girocard’s acceptance at 18 million JCB-affiliated stores worldwide.
- JCB favoured the German national scheme because of the size of its portfolio (the largest one in Europe with 90 million debit cards) and because German people travel the most (51 million tourists in 2009).
- This is a double revolution in card schemes’ international co-operation. For girocard, it represents an alternative to affiliating with the international networks MasterCard and Visa. National card schemes are indeed under pressure from EU authorities to rely less on these two worldwide-scale schemes as the third EU scheme is still being expected. To this regard, JCB has a significant international acceptance network, just like American Express and Diners.
- JCB is developing a new issuing-based strategy outside of Japan. Similar co-badged issuing partnerships are underway with other European card schemes to improve its acceptance. Discussions with GCB, for instance, have started two years ago.