CEDICAM and Equens Start a Commercial Partnership

News provided by

Feb 28, 2011, 03:59 ET

PARIS and UTRECHT, The Netherlands, February 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- CEDICAM, the Credit Agricole Group's payment subsidiary, and Eq uens SE today confirmed that they have signed a framework agreement to establish a commercial partnership. This framework agreement is the first tangible result of fruitful discussions which began at the end of 2009. The parties share a common vision on the strategic developments in the European card and payment processing market and have reflected this in the agreement. Their commercial partnership represents a unique joint opportunity across the French, German, Dutch and Italian geographies which will mutually benefit each organisation's clients.

CEDICAM and Eq uens have stated earlier that they wish to jointly realise the following goals:

    - Combining volumes and developing synergies in order to reduce unit
      processing costs.

    - Fostering growth dynamics in order to be able to offer technical and
      commercial expertise and broad regional coverage.

In the context of the framework agreement, CEDICAM and Equens have identified numerous potential joint projects that will allow them to achieve these goals. In addition, these projects will deliver tangible benefits and address the increasing demand amongst banks for a further reduction of processing costs for the benefit of their customers. These potential joint projects have the following objectives:

    - Defining and implementing the operational conditions for connecting the
      systems of CEDICAM and Equens and exchanging transactions ("in-cloud"
      processing).

    - Sharing expertise in order to optimise IT development activities.

    - Optimising the supply conditions for hardware and software.

    - Exploring new opportunities by expanding potential commercial
      partnerships with the European subsidiaries of the Credit Agricole
      Group.

The parties will also be able to leverage and strengthen their current European footprints (e.g. by cross-selling services to their respective client groups across Europe), thereby creating scale benefits.

Marc Carlos, Head of Payment Systems and Services at Credit Agricole S.A. and Chairman of CEDICAM: "We are convinced that the most pragmatic approach to deliver results and benefits in the short term is to build a strong commercial partnership between us. This framework agreement constitutes a major step towards the implementation of our shared strategic vision of the European card and payment market."

Michael Steinbach, Chairman of Equens' Board of Directors: "This partnership is an important next step in following our European strategy. This extensive commercial agreement between Credit Agricole, CEDICAM and Equens will provide major opportunities for us all in terms of scale and scope in the European market of payment and card processing".

Note to Editors:

About Credit Agricole :

Credit Agricole is France's number one banking organisation, serving 28% of the country's households, and operating across the entire spectrum of banking and finance. It serves 58 million individual customers across the world and has built a network of 11,850 branches in more than 20 countries. Credit Agricole is the largest retail bank in Europe in terms of income from retail banking. It is the leader in France, ranks third in Europe, and ninth worldwide in terms of Tier 1 capital (The Banker 2009). The group operates in 70 countries and has more than 160,000 employees worldwide.

About CEDICAM

CEDICAM is the payment processing and systems subsidiary of Credit Agricole S.A. and the 'Caisses Regionales'. It operates primarily in the domains of electronic banking, payment and card processing, and security of payments. Within the Credit Agricole group, CEDICAM combines expertise to further develop processing activities on a European scale.

For additional information on Credit Agricole and CEDICAM, please visit http://www.credit-agricole.com

About Equens

Equens SE is one of the largest payment processors in Europe, leading the market for future-proof payment and card solutions. Thanks to an extensive and competitive range of services, the company seamlessly meets the requirements and wishes of the European payments market. Equens supports the development of a single, uniform European payments market (SEPA), and is dedicated to the standardisation and harmonisation of European and global payments. With clients and partnerships in multiple European countries, the company offers pan-European market coverage from offices in four countries - the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Finland. And with an annual processing volume of 9.7 billion payments and 3.9 billion POS and ATM transactions, Equens SE has a European market share of more than 12.5%.

For additional information on Equens, please visit http://www.equens.com

SOURCE Equens