CB

Definition

CB refers to the Groupement des Cartes Bancaires (GIE CB), the French card payment network created in 1984 by the major banks to pool the payment and withdrawal infrastructure.

CB is neither Visa nor Mastercard: it is an independent network, specific to the French market, that operates most of the cards issued in France — usually co-badged with Visa or Mastercard for international use.

CB + Visa / Mastercard co-badging

A typical French card carries two logos: CB and Visa (or Mastercard). It can therefore be routed over two networks:

• CB for domestic transactions (mainly mainland France).
• Visa or Mastercard for international and some e-commerce transactions.

The choice of routing belongs to the merchant (acquirer), not the cardholder. Key point: since 2018, the merchant can prioritise CB to benefit from lower interchange — a few tens of cents saved per transaction.

Why CB routing is cheaper

Interchange (the fee paid by the acquirer to the issuing bank) in France follows, for consumer EEA cards, the European caps:

• EEA consumer debit / prepaid: 0.2% (the IFR 2015/751 cap).
• EEA consumer credit: 0.3%.
• EEA commercial cards (CB): around 0.9%.
• Cards issued outside the EEA: uncapped (1 to 2%, or more).

On CB, the scheme fees charged by the GIE are historically lower than those of Visa/Mastercard, which makes CB routing broadly advantageous for the merchant.

The role of the GIE CB

The GIE operates the network rules (technical and commercial), transaction authorisation (ISO 8583 messages), clearing between issuing and acquiring banks, terminal and software certification, and pooled anti-fraud efforts (the payment-security observatory, the Observatoire de la sécurité des moyens de paiement, with the Banque de France). Its members are the major French banks: BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, BPCE, Crédit Mutuel, La Banque Postale.

CB vs Visa / Mastercard

CB therefore plays the role of an economical domestic rail, complementary to the international networks.

What CB is not

• Not a bank: a GIE, with no customers or accounts.
• Not an issuer: your card is issued by your bank; CB provides the rails and the rules.
• Not international: a pure CB card (with no co-badge) does not work abroad — all modern CB cards are co-badged.
• Not a wallet: Apple Pay and Google Pay issue tokens routed over CB or Visa/MC depending on the configuration.

Routing choice: a commercial issue

Since the IFR (2015), the merchant can force the routing of a co-badged card. Most French acquiring PSPs (Worldline, Nepting, Ingenico, Stripe, Adyen) now offer CB by default, because:

• the lower CB interchange reduces the MDR;
• the CB authorisation rate is historically very high;
• terminal compatibility is total in France.

The merchant can switch to Visa/MC for strategic reasons (international acceptance, Apple Pay tokenisation).

In the PSD2 ecosystem

CB is one of the three networks (with Visa and Mastercard) over which card SCA operates via 3DS2. CB runs its own 3DS2 Directory Server; the ACS, on the issuing-bank side, are operated by the banks or by providers (Worldline, Crédit Agricole Cards & Payments).

Real-world examples

• Issuance: your BNP, Société Générale or Crédit Agricole card is almost always co-badged CB + Visa or CB + Mastercard.
• Boursorama / Revolut / N26: these digital banks often issue pure Visa or Mastercard cards (not GIE members), hence a higher interchange for French merchants.
• Merchant routing: according to CB, the cost gap between a payment over CB and one over an international network can range "from 1 to 10" — several million euros a year for a large retailer.
• Apple Pay / Google Pay: since late 2025, the major French banks allow payment over the CB network in these wallets, provided CB is selected at payment.
• Foreign e-commerce: CB routing is not always supported, so the card then switches to Visa/MC (higher interchange but guaranteed acceptance).
• Wero / EPI: the pan-European initiative ultimately aims to compete with the card on P2P and e-commerce, account-to-account (A2A) rather than card-based — one to watch for the future of CB.
• Security: via the Banque de France observatory, the card fraud rate in France remains one of the lowest in the world (around 0.06% of volume in face-to-face payments in recent years).