Visa Europe's debit card V PAY gains traction in Germany
V PAY acceptance strengthened in Germany / Visa Europe reaches agreement with payment services provider ConCardis
3 May 2007 Frankfurt
The acceptance of Visa Europe’s debit card V PAY in Germany is continuing to rise. ConCardis, one of the leading German payment service providers, has agreed to open its merchants for
V PAY, Visa Europe’s SEPA-compliant debit card. ConCardis will start in summer 2007 to get its customers ready to accept V PAY and to equip them with V PAY decals for the Point-of-Sale (POS).
With the agreement, another major part of the Germany-wide net of acceptance points is captured. Europe-wide, V PAY cards are accepted at more than 3.75m payment terminals and 210,000 ATMs.
“With ConCardis, we have won another large payment service provider as a partner for V PAY“, said Ottmar Bloching, General Manager of Visa Europe in Germany. „Our member banks can be sure that V PAY is compliant with all SEPA requirements and is accepted in many stores across Europe. Furthermore, they can offer their customers a debit card with chip and PIN technology, guaranteeing maximum security.”
“The agreement with Visa Europe ensures that ConCardis will be able to continue to offer its customers all services for payment transactions as a one-stop shop”, said Manfred Krüger, Chief Executive Officer of ConCardis. “With the agreement, our customers will be able to accept V PAY payments from the very beginning and are well prepared for SEPA starting in 2008. V PAY provides our retailers with access to customers from all across Europe, opening up a potential sales volume of an eight digit sum.”
Payments with the new debit card V PAY are easy, convenient and welcomed in the whole European Union. With the chip and PIN technology, paying and withdrawing money provides an optimal level of security for both domestic and international transactions. V PAY is compatible with existing schemes and infrastructure, thus minimising costs for retailers and banks. The only prerequisite for retailers to accept V PAY is simply an EMV-compliant terminal.
“We want to keep expenses for the processing of additional products as small as possible. This is why we are very delighted that we can offer such an important product to our customers and that acceptance is easy to set-up without any major technical adaptations“, said Rainer Sureth, Marketing and Sales Manager at ConCardis.
Background information to SEPA and V PAY
The European debit card V PAY is tailored to the needs of European banks and consumers with regard to SEPA. Due to its competitive pricing, V PAY is an efficient alternative for European banks to realise SEPA – to the advantage of consumers and retailers. To ensure the control of European banks over their debit card business, Visa Europe has established steering committees to supervise the development of European debit card, with large German financial institutions represented on these committees. To ensure the interests of banks on a local level are included in the roll-out of the debit card, a German V PAY board has been established.
About ConCardis
ConCardis GmbH of Frankfurt/Main is one of the leading service providers in cashless payment transactions. As a joint venture of the German credit industry, ConCardis provides a comprehensive range of services for card-based payments. The customer base of ConCardis includes some 400,000 retail and service companies, which accept cashless payments in their business locations or provide services in exchange for cashless payments.
As a solution-oriented service provider, ConCardis focuses 100 percent on the requirements of its customers. Following the theme of “one-stop shopping”, ConCardis has consistently expanded its product and service portfolio with innovative product developments and customer-friendly service.
About Visa Europe
In Europe, there are over 320 million Visa debit, credit and commercial cards. In the 12 months ending September 2006, those cards were used to make purchases and cash withdrawals to the value of over € 1.2 trillion. For every € 9 spent in Europe today, € 1 is spent on a Visa card.
Visa Europe is a membership association - an organisation owned and operated by its 4,500 European member banks. As a dedicated European organisation it is able to respond quickly to the specific market needs of European banks and their customers – cardholders and retailers, and to meet the European Commission’s objective to create a true internal market for payments Visa Europe is a part owner of Visa International, the organisation that ensures global interoperability of products as well as management of the Visa brand.
In October 2006, Visa announced that it intends to restructure its entire worldwide organisation except Europe in order to create a new public global corporation called Visa Inc. As a part of this restructuring, Visa Europe will remain a membership association with an exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual license in Europe.
Globally Visa is one of the world’s leading payment brands and has unsurpassed acceptance at approximately 24 million acceptance locations including one million ATMs.
For more information, visit http://www.visaeurope.com.
