Revolutionizing business models and meeting changing customer needs

With a 30% market share and over 40 years of experience, Crédit Agricole Payment Services (CAPS), a fully-owned subsidiary of Crédit Agricole, is a leader in France on the payment market. To bring their leadership to the next level, the company realized it needed to further innovate and differentiate its service offering to its merchant clients, and looked for a technology partner who could help them in the fields of digital payment acceptance and acquiring across multiple channels.

In order to help them digitalize their business model, CAPS turned to Wirecard with the goal of launching a range of unified commerce solutions and pan-European acquiring offerings for French merchants and marketplaces in France and abroad. By capitalizing on their respective strengths, the partnership enables both companies to grow in a rapidly changing market.

Since early 2018, CAPS has been able to take advantage of Wirecard’s full portfolio of payment acceptance and acquiring services in preparation for rolling them out to their clients. The partnership reinforces the development of mobile Point-of-Sale (mPOS) and other Point-of-Sale (POS) solutions for fast and easy payments in line with new use cases and consumer purchasing journeys. In addition to new customer acquisitions, CAPS will offer its existing clients the possibility to combine their existing POS solutions with online and mobile offerings, so that their consumers benefit from an integrated digitalized solution. In addition, CAPS will support the international development of its large customers by providing a centralized platform for acceptance and acquiring processing capabilities in Europe.

Caroline Desmoulins-Le Gall, Director SI Coordination, Organization and Processes of Crédit Agricole Payment Services: “We are delighted with our partnership with Wirecard, one of the most innovative providers of digital financial technology. We value the ability to provide state-of-the-art unified commerce technology to our merchants in France and the whole of Europe in future so that they in turn can offer their customers the best possible digital shopping experience. Not only that, we benefit from the close proximity of the Wirecard team here in Paris meaning that we are always closely aligned, a crucial element of any successful partnership.”

Following a comprehensive technical integration of their technologies, Wirecard and CAPS have agreed on joint commercial business routes for tier 1 merchants and have already issued concrete business plans to hundreds of large strategic accounts. These customers will benefit from the complete range of acceptance and acquiring services, developed by Wirecard, which the two companies are jointly bringing to market.

In addition, CAPS will benefit from Wirecard’s new e-commerce shop extension solution, aimed at partners who offer the Wirecard platform to their merchants under their own brand. Crédit Agricole receives a branded version of Wirecard’s shop extensions, which they in turn offer to merchants worldwide to enable them to set up and evolve their online shops while taking advantage of the full scope of the Wirecard digital financial commerce platform.

Thorsten Holten, Executive Vice President Sales Financial Institutions & FinTech at Wirecard: “Crédit Agricole Group is a leader in the payment market in France. We are proud to provide Crédit Agricole Payment Services with our digital ecosystem of unified commerce solutions and value-added services – all through one platform. Today, it is essential to offer businesses and consumers a smooth digital payment experience. Since announcing our partnership, we have been working constantly on developing joint state-of-the art digital payment solutions as well as an effective go-to-market strategy which is clearly focused on tier 1 customers at the moment. Together, we will continue to shape the future of digital commerce.”