Worldline and ING Expand Card Partnership

Worldline has announced an extended card issuing and processing arrangement with ING.

The French multinational payment company said in a Monday (Jan. 30) press release that it has signed a new multiyear contract to provide debit and credit card issuing and processing services for the Dutch bank across multiple countries.

Commenting on the deal, Alessandro Baroni, deputy head of financial services at Worldline, said “ING and Worldline have been partners in various countries for over three decades. We are very proud that ING is not only prolonging this partnership but also extending the number of countries and services.”

Banks often outsource card issuing and processing as it can be more efficient than managing it in-house. In fact, some of the largest card issuers and processors in the world are non-banks, including Worldline, FIS, Fiserv and Global Payments.

As Worldine stated in Monday’s release, by outsourcing tasks, “ING can rely on top-quality card issuing services backed by state-of-the-art technology, lower operation costs and best-in-class capabilities. This allows ING to provide its customers an enhanced range of issuing solutions that are fully compliant with all regulations, on a local and global level.”

By applying the right technology, card issuance can be streamlined, leading to a more frictionless customer experience.

And as Bo Jiang, CEO of Lithic, told PYMNTS in an interview, these days, its not just banks that issue cards.

Because platforms like Lithic can help create payment cards faster and in a more streamlined fashion, Jiang said they can support all kinds of new B2B use cases.

“Many of the companies we work with today are ones that you don’t actually think of as card and payment companies,” he said, adding that companies are starting to integrate virtual cards into their business processes to help control operational spending.

In that area, companies like Extend have made it easier than ever for businesses to issue virtual cards, removing the need for employees to share physical cards and enabling managers to keep track of miscellaneous spend more easily.

For all PYMNTS EMEA coverage, subscribe to the daily EMEA Newsletter.