UnionPay International, a subsidiary of China UnionPay, has inked a cooperation agreement with the Croatian bank Privredna banka Zagreb (PBZ) and payment card company Intesa Sanpaolo Card (ISPC), PBZ announced in a press release on Monday.
The agreement will enable PBZ to accept UnionPay cards on its ATM and merchants network and for UnionPay cardholders to access ISPC services in Central and Eastern Europe.
The signing ceremony was held in PBZ's headquarters in Zagreb and attended by Shi Wenchao, president of China UnionPay; Dinko Lucic, president of PBZ Card Supervisory Board; Zdenek Houser, president of ISPC; and Deng Ying, the Chinese Ambassador to Croatia.
"We are delighted that PBZ Group will be one of the first . . . to accept UnionPay cards on its ATMs and merchants," Lucić was quoted in the press release. "As a leading Croatian acquirer, including a network of 28,500 POS terminals and around 700 ATMs, we are able to provide broad acceptance at our market offering UnionPay cardholders high-quality financial services."
Houser said that the ISPC will provide technical solutions for UnionPay cards on banks affiliated with the ISPC and provide support in "promoting UnionPay acceptance in their markets."
"This is the first step in our cooperation and we hope that we will continue working together on new business opportunities," he added.
Shi Wenchao said that Croatia and Eastern Europe are emerging outbound destinations for Chinese tourists, and that increasingly close economic, trade and personnel exchanges have sparked great demand for cross-border payment services.
PBZ, a member of the European banking giant Intesa Sanpaolo Group, is one of Croatia's largest banks with over 2.1 million cards issued and 28 percent local market share. ISPC handles card transactions and other related services for banks under the Intesa Sanpaolo Group.