Carrefour Banque Placing Hopes Back on Payment and Credit Services
FACTS
- The French retailer Carrefour aims for high objectives and believed in their move on the neo-banking market. Yet, as C-zam’s failed to succeed, they now seem to be focusing more on payment and credit industries, with their instalment option, for instance.
- Carrefour launched C-zam in March 2017 and intended to feature a low-lost banking offer for the largest possible number of customers. At that point, they bet on their existing locations to sell their service off-the-shelf .
- After a promising start probably owned to the offer’s novelty, C-zam stopped making progress and disappointing results were released in October. Rumours then had it that their subsidiary could be put up for sale.
- Yet another outstanding evolution, Carrefour Banque stopped selling their life-insurance contract, Carrefour Horizons. These choices seemed to show that Carrefour could be refocusing their financial services back on more lucrative segments, i.e.: payment and credit industries.
KEY FIGURES
- 150,000 C-Zam boxes sold, but not all were activated
- 2M Pass MasterCard cardholders
CHALLENGES
- Reducing the reach of their financial services? C-zam’s crisis comes in addition to Carrefour Banque’s overall ambition to focus on more profitable financial services: payment and credit offers.
- With their Pass card, Carrefour Banque is a major player on the market for instalment options which have been gaining ground over the past years.
MARKET PERSPECTIVE
- Industry specialists’ choice to integrate next-generation technologies widely contributed to blurring competition barriers between contenders with different core businesses. Web giants, retailers, merchants, mobile carriers and even car manufacturers: they all feature more or less successful alternative offers.