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Established in 1984, Cartes Bancaires CB introduced
a system that is unaparalleled in Europe and which has become a reference
in its field. More on this success story below!
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What was electronic card payment like 20 ears
ago? "The progress made since the early 1980s is such that no
one really has any clear memory of what the old payment systems were
like: manual imprinters with wheels cogs that had to be rotated to
show the sale amount, purchases via minitel where the card had to
be inserted into a reader, and so forth," recalled Yves Randoux,
CEO of Cartes Bancaires.
"The progress made in terms of bankcard
acceptance has been immense."
Driven by Cartes Bancaires, the banking and electronic payment community
has introduced many initiatives over these past two decades to help
develop a reliable and practical payment method. The starting point
for the bankcard's growth was a "very simple but major idea",
namely, the concept of interbanking.
On 31st July 1984, 11 banks signed a protocol agreement
for the establishment of a single bankcard payment and cash withdrawal
system. And thus, the Groupement des Cartes Bancaires "CB"
was born. Three years later, with 17 million cardholders, France
led the world in terms of the number of ATMs and had Europe's largest
network of retail outlets accepting payment by CB bankcard. Since
1984, the volume of transactions has increased steadily (up 44% in
1993 alone!). This growth reflects the level of security provided
to cardholders. Indeed, since 1992, their cards have had an inbuilt
microchip, and as a result, CB system has one of the lowest levels
of card fraud in the world. "Cartes Bancaires took the courageous
step of adopting this new technology before anyone else, and this
clearly contributes to our success," added Yves Randoux.
After the introduction of the microchip, the next major watershed
came in 1997 when the CB banking community decided to adopt EMV, a
new international standard that provides a quantum lead leap forward
in terms of security for the 640 million bankcards in circulation
in Europe. This figure alone resumes Cartes Bancaires's success as
we look back over its first two decades of activity. |
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