Bankard
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Bankard (PSE: BKD) is one of the largest credit card issuers in the Philippines, issuing VISA, MasterCard and JCB credit cards. It also issued its own line of credit and debit cards in the 1990s.
[edit] History
Bankard was established as the credit card arm of the Philippine Commercial International Bank, or PCI Bank, then known as Philippine Commercial Credit Card, Inc., on December 4, 1981. PCCCI, as it was known, started full operations in June 1982. On July 8, 1992, the name was changed to the present-day Bankard. It started issuing MasterCard cards in 1991 and VISA cards in 1995.
When PCI Bank merged with Equitable Bank to form Equitable PCI Bank, the new Equitable PCI chose to keep Equitable Bank's credit card arm, Equitable CardNetwork, rather than to incorporate Bankard into Equitable's credit card operations. Bankard was then sold in May 2000 to the Yuchengco Group of Companies, best known as the owners of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, or RCBC. RCBC's credit card operations, RCBC Card, were subsequently merged into Bankard, forming the current company. Through RCBC Card, Bankard also started issuing JCB cards
Bankard today is two-thirds owned by the Yuchengco Group of Companies and is an affiliate of RCBC. However, this is set to change after the Yuchengco Group of Companies accepted a buyout offer from GE Consumer Finance for an undisclosed price, subject to stockholder approval. In the past, YGC had sought to nullify its acquisition on the grounds that it paid Equitable PCI Bank too much.
