CREDIT AGRICOLE SA

A new major step in their partnership to provide digital payments to merchants in France: Crédit Agricole and Worldline announce the launch of their joint-venture

        Press Release

A new major step in their partnership to provide digital payments to merchants in France:
Crédit Agricole and Worldline announce the launch of their joint-venture

Montrouge, Paris La Défense, 20 March 2024 - After receiving unconditional authorization from the European Commission, Crédit Agricole [Euronext: ACA] and Worldline [Euronext: WLN] announce the creation of their joint-venture for digital payment services for merchants in France.

At the first Board meeting, held on 19 March 2024, Laurent Bennet, Chief Executive Officer of Crédit Agricole des Savoie, was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors and Meriem Echcherfi was appointed Chief Executive Officer. The commercial brand of the joint venture will be unveiled very soon.

The joint-venture aims to become a major player in payment services in France. It will leverage Worldline’s technological performance and innovation capabilities, particularly in the area of acceptance, and Crédit Agricole group’s merchant acquiring performance in the French market. The joint-venture will also be responsible for the commercial development of this alliance with merchants, while providing active support to the banks within the Crédit Agricole group. The joint venture is 50% owned plus one share by Worldline and will therefore be fully consolidated. Crédit Agricole holds 50% of the capital less one share and will supervise the joint venture.

The joint venture will integrate the "Cartes Bancaires" (CB) domestic payment scheme. In addition to French merchants, Worldline will offer its international merchants access to the CB scheme, thereby extending its wide range of local payment methods through access to one of the most powerful European domestic payment schemes.

Gilles Grapinet, CEO of Worldline: “With the unconditional approval received from the European Commission at the beginning of March, we are particularly pleased to announce today the finalization of the agreements enabling the implementation of our joint-venture, which will be headed by Meriem Echcherfi. This is another key step in our strategic partnership with the Crédit Agricole group in France, a market offering extremely important development prospects for Worldline. By combining Worldline's technological expertise and offerings in payments with Crédit Agricole's performance and distribution power, this unique collaboration promises to meet the ever-changing needs of merchants. Together, we have the greatest ambitions for our joint-venture, which will offer the best of our two groups to merchants and retailers operating in France in both physical and online commerce.”