Cartes Bancaires (CB)
Also known as: CB, Groupement des Cartes Bancaires, GIE CB
Cartes Bancaires, or CB, is France's domestic card scheme, run by the Groupement des Cartes Bancaires CB, an economic interest grouping created in 1984. It sets the operating rules of the CB scheme for physical cards and cards held in a mobile wallet.
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Example
A French consumer card often shows the CB logo next to a Visa or Mastercard logo. A terminal that supports CB can route the payment over the domestic scheme.
If you sell to French consumers, CB is the scheme you will meet before you meet a Visa or a Mastercard.
What it is
The Groupement des Cartes Bancaires CB describes itself as a Groupement d'Intérêt Économique, created in 1984. Its job, in its own words, is to define how the CB payment scheme operates, for a card that is physical or "dematerialised in the mobile". It holds subsidiaries through a holding company and a stake in the STET clearing and routing network. The grouping calls the CB scheme the most used card and mobile payment scheme in France. That is the scheme's own claim, undated, so treat it as such.
CB is a card scheme: the shared rules that let any member issuer's card work at any member acquirer's merchant.
Why a merchant cares
A French card can carry CB and an international brand together. That is co-badging. The routing choice sits between the shop and the customer: under Article 8 of the Interchange Fee Regulation you may set a default brand on your terminal, and the customer may override it.
Two practical checks before you launch in France. First, ask your acquirer whether it accepts CB, or only the international schemes. Second, ask what the payment terminal or the Tap to Pay app does with a co-badged card by default.
CB is not an extra to switch on. For many French cards it is the card.
