Under this card program, North America-based multinational customers can extend their US Bank Corporate Card programs to employees of their European operations and aggregate global spending data.
Elavon Financial Services, a provider of merchant acquiring services and the subsidiary of US Bancorp, will issue these commercial cards.
Initially, the bank is planning to focus on issuing cards in the UK and Ireland, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, and later expand the service to other European countries.
The bank initially intends to offer settlement options in euro and British pound sterling, and support its customer language requirements in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
The bank said the cards will be in compliance with European technology standards, including full Chip-and-PIN capability.
Based in the UK, Alan Gibson, director of European commercial payments for US Bank Corporate Payment Systems, will oversee the activities and the ongoing product strategy.
US Bank Corporate Payment Systems senior vice president of strategy and product Kurt Adams said that increasingly, bank’s North American-based multinational clients want consolidated worldwide reporting of data for rapid analysis of commercial card use.
"They also want their card programs to fall under a single global contract with a single point of approval and a single service contact," Adams said.
In addition, the US Bank said it will continue to participate in the Global Commercial Payment Solutions (GCPS) network to serve customers outside its own issuing market following the launch of US Bank commercial cards in Europe.
GCPS is a joint venture of Visa and several card issuing banks.
