In a move aimed at significantly expanding its card-brands’ acceptance in Europe, Discover Financial Services has forged a processing and merchant-acquiring agreement with First Data Corp. for international operations, a Discover executive tells PaymentsSource.
The deal will enhance acceptance of the River Woods, Ill.-based company’s Discover and Diners Club International card brands through a host of merchant acquirers First Data serves in Europe, says Gerry Wagner, Discover’s vice president of global acceptance.
Dublin-based Allied Irish Bank and Netherlands-based European Merchant Services are the first two merchant acquirers Discover has signed to accept its card brands since inking the international First Data deal recently, and several more are in the works, Wagner says.
“Quite a few merchant acquirers we want to reach sit on First Data’s international platform and this arrangement makes it very easy for us to extend our brand to them now,” he says.
Discover also hopes to tap additional merchant acquirers through OmniPay Ltd., a Dublin-based card-processing company First Data co-owns, that has operations in other parts of Europe and also Asia, Wagner says.
Through these new relationships, Discover plans to significantly increase its card-brand acceptance in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, among countries, he says.
“We’re reaching the point in certain major cities in Europe where casual U.S. travelers can now find many locations where Discover is accepted, and that momentum will continue accelerating now that the First Data international platform is certified,” he says.
Discover for the past four years has been working to increase worldwide acceptance of its Diners Club brand, which is operated through some 50 different franchises that issue cards globally (
So far the company’s U.S.-issued Discover cards are also accepted at many, but not all, Diners Club locations, Wagner says.
“The ultimate plan is for Discover cards to be accepted at all Diners Club locations around the world, but working out the technology for networks in different regions sometimes takes a bit of time,” Wagner says.
Discover separately announced on June 29 that Russian Standard Bank has agreed to form a new Diners Club International franchise that will issue and acquire Diners Club cards in Russia and the Ukraine. Russian Standard replaces a franchise agreement with another bank that ended, a Discover spokesperson says.
Russian Standard, with more than 150 branches and 30 million customers, is Russia’s largest credit card issuer, the companies said in a press release.
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