How does Cartes Bancaires work for online payments?
A CB payment looks like any card payment to the shopper. They type their card details or use a wallet, and the issuer authorises the payment. INSEE explains that authorisation requests from payment terminals and websites travel over the CB interbank network to the card issuer, which runs its checks before approving. The scheme is organised by the GIE Cartes Bancaires, which was set up in 1984 to give France a single interbank card that every merchant could accept, whatever the issuing bank.
Most CB cards carry two brands. Stripe says more than 95% of CB cards are co-badged with Visa or Mastercard, which means a payment can run over CB or over the international network. Checkout.com describes CB as the predominant card scheme in France. Both Stripe and Checkout.com retry a payment on Visa or Mastercard if CB declines it for a technical reason.
CB works in Apple Pay too. Stripe supports CB in Apple Pay for EUR payments and asks merchants to enable CB as an Apple Pay network only when they can process CB charges.
Where and how do shoppers use Cartes Bancaires?
In France, in shops and online. INSEE says that over 40 years the CB card has become the payment method French consumers and merchants use most often for everyday spending, by number of transactions, both in physical stores and in e-commerce. J.P. Morgan, which became a principal member of the scheme in 2024, cites 77 million CB cards in circulation and more than EUR 676 billion in processed payments.
Card fraud in France is low. The Banque de France’s payment security observatory reported a card fraud rate of 47 euros per 100,000 euros of payments in 2025, its lowest level on record, and says the fraud rate for card payments on the internet has fallen by 50% since 2020.
Stripe lists CB customer locations as Europe and the presentment currency as EUR. A business outside France must first process one payment from a CB eligible card before the method is fully enabled on Stripe.
What rules and costs should merchants know?
The shopper can choose the network. Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2015/751 bars card schemes, issuers, acquirers and processors from adding mechanisms that limit the payer’s or the payee’s choice of brand on a co-badged card. The merchant may set an automatic priority, for example to prefer CB, but must not stop the shopper from overriding it. Stripe’s compliance guide turns this into checkout rules for EEA businesses that can process CB, for co-badged CB cards in EUR: let the cardholder select a preferred network, show the brand logos clearly and consistently, use the chosen network for the payment and for any stored card, and let the cardholder change it when updating saved details. If the shopper makes no choice, the merchant can pick the network.
Disputes are narrower. Stripe says CB dispute rules are more stringent than those of Visa and Mastercard, with fewer reasons a cardholder can dispute a charge, which leads on average to a lower dispute rate. Businesses cannot contest CB disputes on Stripe, and Stripe’s dispute fee on CB is EUR 0.
EU card rules apply. Regulation (EU) 2015/751 caps interchange on consumer debit card payments at 0.2% of the transaction value, and the EU’s Your Europe portal states that merchants may not charge customers extra for paying by credit or debit card, in shops or online.
How would Omno handle Cartes Bancaires?
- One checkout: The Omno hosted checkout would show cards next to wallets, local methods and crypto, and would let the shopper choose between CB and Visa or Mastercard on a co-badged card. Merchants with their own checkout would take CB with Card Fields instead.
- Routing rules: The merchant would set a rule that sends CB payments in EUR to a connected provider that processes CB, and Visa or Mastercard payments to providers for those networks. Omno connects through those providers; it is not an acquirer and does not hold funds.
- Cascading: If the chosen provider is unavailable or rejects the request, the payment would move to the next provider in the rule until one accepts.
- Status: The final result would reach the merchant by webhook.
What should merchants plan for?
Check that your providers process CB. A route that only supports Visa and Mastercard sends co-badged cards over the international network.
Build the network choice into the card form. In the EEA the shopper must be able to pick CB or the international brand, and that choice must be kept for saved cards.
Decide your default network. You may set a priority, such as CB, as long as the shopper can override it.
Expect fewer disputes but no appeal. CB disputes are rarer, but on Stripe they cannot be contested.