BdF and CDC Creating “Victoires Paiements”
- Banque de France and Caisse des Dépôts are about to create an Economic Interest Grouping (GIE) dedicated to retail means of payments and gathering their exchange activities in this sector.
- This GIE called “Victoires Paiements”, would allow them to reach the required "critical mass" to stabilise and strengthen their processing activities. The two players would also mutualise the costs induced by the modernisation of a SEPA-compliant Information System and its long run maintenance.
- Among the activities concerned by this agreement, their press release mentions the reception of operations files transmitted by each institution’s customers, their verification, numbering and their issuance towards interbank systems in charge of transmitting them to the other banks.
Source: Press rrelease
- This sharing seems reasonable as the two institutions have relatively similar customers from the public and semi-public sectors (French Treasury–Trésor Public, national health insurance fund–CPAM, the URSSAF, social allowance fund–CAF and pension funds–Caisses de retraite). In 2011, Banque de France and CDC have exchanged 1.2 billion transactions (issuance and reception).
- It should be reminded that the SEPA migration “end-date” has been set to 1st February 2014 (see March 2012 Insight). This GIE should help speed up the implementation of the required technical platforms by the two institutions.