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Diners Club International Ltd. has signed a multiyear merchant-acquiring agreement with Switzerland-based payment-services provider SIX Multipay AG. The deal provides merchants in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg with a single acquirer to accept Diners Club cards and Discover Network cards. Discover Network bought Diners Club from Citigroup Inc. last year. "This agreement enhances our presence to grow key markets that are important to our Discover Network cardholders and Diners Club cardmembers," a Discover Network spokesperson tells CardLine. "As a market-leading acquirer and processor, SIX Multipay provides us with a multifaceted relationship as we look to expand in key European markets." She declined to specify the length of the agreement, but a SIX Multipay spokesperson says it is for at least five years. SIX Multipay acquires card transactions for some 80,000 merchants, he adds. Eric Grover, principal at Intrepid Ventures, a Menlo Park, Calif., consultancy, tells CardLine the deal is "a step in the direction of Discover (Network) being potentially the third European payment card network to compete with MasterCard and Visa." Though Discover's acceptance is nowhere near that of Visa's and MasterCard's, "Discover's acquisition of Diners was the best thing they've done to expand their acceptance." European banks and regulators would like to see more competing networks in the region, an advantage for Discover, Grover says. "The only problem for Discover is this network has American DNA, and that's not necessarily [the regulators'] ideal."
