Cofinoga and French Postal Services Group La Poste in ATM deal
Customers of French consumer credit company Cofinoga can now use the ATMs of French postal services group La Poste for cash withdrawals, following an agreement announced last month. With 4,025 ATMs, La Poste has the third largest network in France after Credit Agricole and Groupe Caisse d’Epargne.
Cofinoga, owned by French department store Galeries Lafayette and BNP’s consumer finance subsidiary Cetelem, is the third largest private label issuer in France with 9.0 million cards and loans of (euro) 7.8 billion at the end of 2001.
La Poste, which is part of the Groupement des Cartes Bancaires (GCB) bank card network, had 3.7 million cards in issue at the end of 2001, equating to a 8.5 percent share of the bank card market.
Private label cards are extremely popular in France and–unlike most bank cards–offer a line of revolving credit. Acceptance of private label cards is however poor, compared to acceptance of bank cards. Cards issued by Cetelem–the market leader–are accepted at 131,000 merchant outlets, while Cofinoga’s cards are accepted at around 25,000 outlets. By contrast bank cards are accepted at around 840,000 merchant outlets and 37,000 ATMs.
La Poste first opened up its ATM network to Auchan store cards in 2001, to the wide dismay of French banks keen to preserve the competitive advantage of bank cards. This more recent deal with Cofinoga levels the playing field further.
La Poste has said that its deal with Cofinoga is intended to increase traffic on its ATM network and is unrelated to its own plans to move into consumer credit, which is subject to government approval.
