A planned pan-European payments network backed by 22 banks to compete with U.S. duo Mastercard and Visa appealed on Tuesday for public money, saying its private backers were not prepared to stump up all the cash needed, according to Reuters.
The European Payments Initiative (EPI) was launched last year and is seeking to get more banks and other players in payments on board by December to finalise plans to start rolling out its instant and card payments network.
“Public funding would be nice,” EPI Chief Executive Martina Weimert told an event held by the European Payments Institutions Federation. “Let’s not hide it – it’s going to be a massive investment. It’s expensive.”
The European Union has been keen to achieve strategic autonomy in financial services, such as by cutting reliance on U.S. Mastercard and Visa for cross-border card payments. It’s unclear whether that will extend to financial backing for EPI.
Weimert said EPI was now in a “critical phase” of decision making over the next few weeks.
It will build a new system and largely replace a plethora of national systems to reduce fragmentation and overlaps in payments, she said, aiming to launch in 2022 peer-to-peer transactions based on instant payments, followed by e-commerce.
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:
