Highlights:

• JCB and Banco Santander have evolved their partnership to additionally support e-commerce exchange between JCB’s 140 million global cardmembers and Banco Santander’s online merchant portfolio in Spain.
• Banco Santander’s merchant partners in industries such as retail, hospitality, transportation, travel, restaurants, and education can now welcome increased revenue by utilising J/Secure™ 1.0 on their online platforms.
• According to Banco Santander, the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain has moved customers to online sales, increasing e-commerce transactions by over 40%. Many face-to-face merchants have been forced to a quick digitisation of their businesses to offer their products online or over the phone for delivery.

In June 2019, JCB International Co. Ltd., the international operations subsidiary of JCB Co., Ltd., and Banco Santander, through its subsidiary Santander España Merchant Services, partnered to support the growth of face-to-face transactions made by JCB cardmembers across Spain. Earlier this year, in March 2020, JCB and Banco Santander pivoted this collaboration to additionally support online exchange between JCB cardmembers and Banco Santander’s e-commerce merchants. This extensive merchant list includes those in the retail, hospitality, transportation, travel, restaurant, and education sectors, to name a few.

In the past 4 years, JCB’s annual sales volume has increased by approximately 37% globally, with over 140 million cardmembers and around 34 million merchants now accepting JCB cards. This JCB partnership with Banco Santander offers merchants and cardmembers a safe online purchase experience with JCB’s J/Secure™1.0 (based on Visa’s 3-D Secure Core Protocol Specifications).

This secure platform enhances the online shopping experience, as it identifies cardmembers by requesting a password. J/Secure™ 2.0 (based on the EMV 3-D Secure Protocol and Core Functions Specification) is set to follow the additional expansion in future.

Rubén Justel, Managing Director at Santander España Merchant Services, said, “This new step on our fruitful partnership with JCB contributes to our vision to help our merchants increase their sales by accepting the most demanded means of payments, in addition to reaching more international clients from JCB issuing countries.”

Tsuyoshi Notani, Managing Director, JCB International (Europe) Ltd. said, “Partnering with Banco Santander has enabled us to further fulfil our promise to provide our card members with as many safe payment methods for international online transactions as possible. We are further delighted to be able to support Banco Santander’s merchants, as they welcome e-commerce trade while we have seen a decline in face-to-face sales in recent months. It is our hope that this collaboration will support recovery of the payment industry, especially in Spain, after the global COVID-19 pandemic.”