Co-badged Card Compliance

Co-badged cards are payment cards that carry logos and functions of two or more payment networks. This means a single card can be used with multiple payment schemes, typically providing the cardholder with more flexibility in how and where they make payments.

For example, a co-badged card might feature both Visa and Mastercard along with a local payment network logo, such as Cartes Bancaires (France's domestic network) or Dankort (Denmark's local network).

Chargebee currently supports Cartes Bancaires with Stripe as part of co-badged card compliance. Learn more

Benefits of co-badged cards

The following are benefits of using co-badged cards:

• Wider acceptance: Cardholders can use the same card for both domestic (via local card scheme) and international (via Visa/Mastercard) transactions, which may increase acceptance in both domestic and international transactions.
• Lower fees for domestic use: Transactions routed through local card schemes may generally have lower fees.

Regulation

Regulation 2015/751 of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) requires that cardholders using co-badged cards must be clearly informed of their payment scheme options if the service supports multiple schemes.

The regulation focuses on these key principles:

• Identify payment schemes: Clearly display the available payment schemes (for example, Visa, Mastercard) with consistent logos and sizes.
• Honor cardholder's choice: You can set a default payment scheme, but if the cardholder selects a specific scheme, you must route the payment through that chosen scheme.

Applicability

• Display of accepted payment schemes: Merchants must clearly indicate the payment schemes (for example, Cartes Bancaires, Visa, or Mastercard) they accept before initiating a transaction.
  
• Automatic selection of default scheme: For co-badged cards, if a merchant supports only one payment scheme, the payment page should automatically select that scheme. However, the customer must still be notified of this selection and their available options.
• Limited requirement: According to Article 10 of Regulation 2015/751, merchants are only required to default to the supported scheme if they do not accept both schemes on a co-badged card. While merchants are not required to adopt additional payment brands, they must provide a choice to customers when both schemes are supported.