Bank-backed mobile payment operators from Italy, Spain and Portugal have pioneered interoperable money transfers, making it possible for users to conduct instant cross-border P2P transactions.
With the aim of enabling pan-European and cross-border payments, and fostering interoperability, „BANCOMAT (Italy), Bizum (Spain and Andorra), and MB WAY/SIBS (Portugal) have enabled interoperability between their services, and carried the first instant payment transactions, making it easier for their users to make instant payments between people using only their mobile device, their preferred mobile solution, and European infrastructures.” – according to the press release.
This launch, with a live demonstration that took place at the Web Summit, one of the world’s largest technology events, showcased the first real transactions between BANCOMAT, Bizum and MB WAY users, through SEPA instant transfers and in collaboration with financial institutions in the respective countries.
Codenamed EuroPA, the European Payments Alliance, this launch, that entailed multidisciplinary work teams from the three payment solutions, to be accomplished in less than one year after being announced, is just the first step towards interoperability between +45 million users and more than 182 financial institutions, which is expected to be made widely available from 2025 mostly starting from Italy, Portugal and Spain, and with the aim of expanding across Europe
The EuroPA project underlines the importance of interoperability as a viable and high- potential solution that aims to meet the Eurosystem’s objectives, seeking to encourage the adoption of pan-European instant transfers using existing infrastructures that have proven to be effective and widely adopted. This solution will enable cross-border payments to be made by more than 45 million users of the three leading solutions, MB WAY, Bancomat and Bizum, who have already made a total of 1.5 billion payments in 2023, demonstrating the high impact and significance of these solutions in the European market.
With this initiative to connect different solutions, BANCOMAT, Bizum and MB WAY/SIBS are positioning themselves as pioneers in the creation of a pan-European cross-border payment network, laying the foundations for a more efficient, secure and universal payment experience, relying on the strength of their leading brands in their respective countries to connect existing services and infrastructures that are trusted and preferer by users.
In addition, there are already ongoing discussions with other solutions that might join.
Overall, the EuroPA project represents a significant step towards widespread interoperability and an efficient digital cross-border payments pan-European ecosystem, by leveraging existing infrastructures and providing solutions that are already tailored to user demands and preferences.
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For 40 years, BANCOMAT SpA, the most widespread and well-known payment scheme in Italy, has been in charge of managing the BANCOMAT®, PagoBANCOMAT® and BANCOMAT Pay® brands. It is one of the main and most important operators in the debit card payment market in Italy, with over 3 billion payment and withdrawal transactions worth approximately €225 billion per month and around 31 million
cards in circulation. It belongs to 113 Italian banks.
With more than 27.5 million users, 70,000 affiliated businesses and 11,000 donation codes, Bizum is the success story of Spanish banking; a joint project that is part of its collaborative and digital innovation
initiatives. With its payment services, based on immediate SEPA instant transfers, and digital
identification via mobile phone, in a convenient, fast and secure way, banks expand their service
offering to their customers. The combined sum of the banking brands that offer Bizum to their
customers already represents a market share of more than 99% and Bizum continues to work to
incorporate new users and use cases. Only last year, the Spanish population made more than 900 million
instant transfers through Bizum, which represented more than the 50% of the transfers realized last year
in Spain.
MB WAY was the first immediate transfer solution in the Eurozone, and to date is the most complete
one, with more than 12 features, including peer to peer instant transfers, e-commerce, MB WAY QR
Code, NFC payments, ATM withdraws and donations. MB WAY users make more +70 Million transactions
per month, across more than 500.000 POI and merchants, and between more +12 Million cards and
accounts.
With more than four decades of existence, SIBS provides modern, reliable and secure financial services,
especially in the payments sector, to more than 150 million users on three different continents,
processing more than 10 billion transactions annually. In addition to being one of the main payment
processors in Europe, SIBS is a reference in security and anti-fraud solutions in business process
outsourcing and a leader in the Iberian Peninsula in card production and personalization.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
