Credit Agricole seeks to reclaim technology it developed with Wirecard

PARIS (Reuters) - French bank Credit Agricole said on Thursday it will seek to reclaim the payments technology it was working on with Wirecard as part of their partnership.

German payments firm Wirecard filed for insolvency in June, owing creditors 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), after disclosing a 1.9 billion-euro hole in its accounts that its auditor, EY, said was the result of a sophisticated global fraud.

Wirecard and Credit Agricole Payment Services had a "strategic partnership", aimed at facilitating online payments for merchants.

"Customers will benefit from new e-commerce payment acceptance and acquiring services, developed by Wirecard, which the two companies are jointly bringing to market," their joint statement said last year.

A year after that, the administrator of the collapsed firm said in July some investors have expressed interest in buying the company's core business and its holdings.

"By nature, we will reclaim the technology that we have developed ourselves," Credit Agricole Chief Executive Philippe Brassac told a news conference.

"On what was developed by them, yes, we will try to get back something one way or another. We are interested in reclaiming at least what was related to our development," Brassac said.

Brassac also said Wirecard was a client of Credit Agricole's investment bank and that any impact of that was reflected in the bank's second-quarter results.

Credit Agricole reported a 22% drop in quarterly profit on Thursday.

(Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva in Paris; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Kim Coghill)

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