Citi and FIS get pally with PayPal
Citi and FIS have formed separate agreements with PayPal for Citi cardmembers and FIS linking payment cards.
For Citi, its customers will be able to use their Citi Cards with PayPal – online, in-app and in store – in 2017. Terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.
With this agreement, Citi says it is the first global bank to partner with PayPal to tokenise cards for customers wishing to use PayPal for in-store purchases, across Mastercard and Visa portfolios in the US.
This announcement follows Citi launching its own branded mobile wallet – Citi Pay – to take on rivals such as Android Pay, Samsung Pay and PayPal. So the latest deal with the latter is interesting.
For consumers who bank with FIS clients, they can link a payment card or other financial account to a new or existing PayPal account, and display the financial institution’s brand within PayPal. The partnership also will allow those financial institution customers to set their default funding source in PayPal.
Anthony Jabbour, chief operating officer, banking and payments, FIS, says this “can remind its customers of the ease with which they can shop, and make them more likely to use that particular account and to increase spend”.
Avidia Bank and the 15 chartered banks of Wintrust Financial, two FIS clients, will premiere account linking in the first quarter of 2017. It will be available to all FIS clients beginning in the first half of 2017.
