Accepting Cartes Bancaires in France

Cartes Bancaires, usually written CB, is the French domestic card scheme. Most French cards are co-badged, carrying CB alongside Visa or Mastercard, which means the same card can be routed down either network at a different cost. For a merchant selling into France that routing choice is the single largest lever on card acceptance cost, and it is frequently exercised by default rather than by decision.

Routing

Co-badging and routing: where the money is

When a French consumer pays with a co-badged card, the transaction can clear through CB or through the international scheme. The economics differ. Under European rules the choice of routing is not supposed to be dictated to you, but exercising it requires your acquirer to support it and requires someone in your business to have asked. Merchants who have never raised the question are usually routing on whatever default their provider configured, which was not chosen with your margin in mind.

Why a French rate cannot be assumed from a European one

France is a market where domestic and international rails coexist on the same plastic, so an effective rate quoted across Europe tells you almost nothing about what you pay in France specifically. Isolating French volume and looking at how it actually routes is the only way to know whether your French acceptance is efficient.

Co-badging

Two brands on one card is the cardholder’s entitlement, not a favour from your acquirer

French co-badging is usually described as though the scheme arranged it. The regulation describes it the other way round.

Article 8(2) of Regulation (EU) 2015/751 provides that when entering into a contractual agreement with a payment service provider, the consumer may require two or more different payment brands on a card-based payment instrument, provided that such a service is offered by the payment service provider. Article 8(3) then constrains what may be built on top of that: any difference in treatment of issuers or acquirers in scheme rules and in rules in licensing agreements concerning co-badging of different payment brands or payment applications on a card-based payment instrument shall be objectively justified and non-discriminatory.

Read together, those two sentences change the tone of a conversation with an acquirer. The second brand on a French card is there because the cardholder was entitled to ask for it, and the rules governing how the two are treated have to survive a test of objective justification. So when a provider tells you that CB routing is not available on your account, that is a statement about their configuration and their commercial position rather than about what the regulation permits. Asking which of the two it is, in writing, is a reasonable question and a revealing one.

Wero

Wero is rolling out in France

According to EPI, Wero has been live for consumer payments in France since 2024 and retail payments are rolling out progressively through 2026, following the German launch at the end of 2025. France is therefore one of the markets where an account-to-account alternative to card acceptance is arriving with bank backing rather than as a fintech proposition. Whether that changes your French mix is a question worth asking before the answer is decided for you.

Which payment provider supports Cartes Bancaires in France?

Payplug, Worldline, HiPay and CCV all name Cartes Bancaires among the schemes they accept, as does any acquirer serving France. The useful questions are how your co-badged volume routes today, whether you can influence it, what each route costs, and whether anyone has measured the difference across a full month of French transactions.

Steering

You are allowed to steer, and you are allowed to say what it costs you

Routing is settled upstream, between your acquirer and the schemes. What happens in front of the customer is governed separately, and more favourably to you than most merchants realise.

Article 11(1) of Regulation (EU) 2015/751 prohibits any rule in licensing agreements, in scheme rules applied by payment card schemes and in agreements entered into between card acquirers and payees preventing payees from steering consumers to the use of any payment instrument preferred by the payee. Article 11(2) prohibits any rule preventing payees from informing payers about interchange fees and merchant service charges.

The second one is the one nobody uses. You are entitled to tell a French customer what a given card costs you to accept. The first one is the one worth money. Which brand appears first in a co-badged checkout, which is preselected and how each is labelled is yours to set, and on French volume that ordering is the cheapest cost lever you own. Reordering a checkout is an afternoon of developer time. Renegotiating a rate takes a quarter, and the rate you renegotiate still applies to whichever rail the transaction happened to take.

Reviewing what this costs you

What you pay is set in your PSP contract, not by the scheme. Start by establishing whether you are overpaying your PSP, or move straight to cutting your PSP costs, where interchange, scheme fees and markup are separated before anything is negotiated.

Relevant markets: France