Deutsche Bank, Lenders Push for New Debit-Card System (Update1)
By Cornelius Rahn and Aaron Kirchfeld

July (Bloomberg) -- European banks, including Deutsche Bank AG and Societe Generale SA, will likely create a group in October to push ahead with plans for a debit-card system to challenge Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., Deutsche Bank Chief Operating Officer Hermann-Josef Lamberti said.

“We all knew it was important to get the Germans and the French to agree,” Lamberti said today at a conference in Frankfurt, where Deutsche Bank is based. “When the rest of Europe sees that these two can agree, then the result has a chance to evolve into a solid European system.”

The European Central Bank and the continent’s lenders have been pushing for the creation of a third pan-European debit system as an alternative to MasterCard’s Maestro and Visa Europe’s V PAY.  Societe Generale and BNP Paribas SA, both based in Paris, and Deutsche Bank are among banks working on the project called Monnet.

The goal is to have banks from 31 European countries join the payment system, Lamberti said. Bundesbank board member Hans Georg Fabritius, speaking at the same event, said Europe should have at least one card system based on the continent.

“A duopoly of the two international card companies is an unsatisfying vision for both political and economic reasons for us in Europe,” Fabritius said.  

He called Monnet a “promising” cooperation between large German and French banks. So far the project is no more than a concept, and the participation of more European countries would be “beneficial,” he said.

MasterCard, which is based in Purchase, New York, is the second-biggest electronic payment network after San Francisco- based Visa.

Here's the bonus coverage on Monnet...