The co-branded cards are Chip and PIN cards with both Laser and Maestro functions.

It also provides co-branded cards, the MasterCard NMC and Géant La Carte.

The co-branded card can be issued with various partners - a bank, a railway company, a municipality or a local government, a cultural institution or other.

Meanwhile, credit offerings with merchant tie-ins, known as "co-branded" cards, captured the imagination of some middle-class customers.

He experimented with co-branded cards, but ultimately decided to keep his old stripes: Providian would be different by offering even higher credit lines to people of modest means.

American Express corporate cards do not, for example, although many of its "co-branded" cards, those issued in conjunction with an airline or hotel chain, do.

The number of co-branded cards is small compared with the number of traditional gasoline-only credit cards that oil companies have issued for more than 60 years.

But the co-branded cards are "just up and getting started," said the president of The Nilson Report, David Robertson.

By 2009, the company had issued over 18 million cards (over 20 million if co-branded cards are included).

But because Visa could do nothing to stop these "co-branded" cards, it decided that it, too, would seek partners.