The European Payment Alliance is beginning the switch to instant cross-border payments between mobile transfer schemes Bancomat, Bizum, MB Way and Iberia’s Sibs, enabling users in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Andorra to send and receive money instantly to mobile phone numbers, connecting more than 50 million users and 186 financial institutions. From today, the banks that are part of the local solutions will start to adhere to the interconnection gradually. It is expected that all participant banks (from Italy, Portugal, Spain and Andorra), will be connected by June.
„Bancomat, Bizum and MB WAY have begun rolling-out their connection, which will enable users in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Andorra to send and receive money instantly to mobile phone numbers, using their preferred payment solutions.” – according to the press release.
With this launch users from Bancomat, Bizum and MB WAY can easily and instantly transfer money cross border with the same speed and user experience that they currently have: it’s as simple as selecting the contact from the contact list and money will be immediately available on the destination account. Users can expect the same confidence and security as they have currently.
EuroPA enables interoperability between Bancomat, Bizum and MB WAY, connecting more than 50 million users and 186 financial institutions from Italy, Portugal, Spain and Andorra. Bancomat, Bizum and MB WAY are the leading mobile payment solutions in their countries, with more than 2 billion payments in 2024 and a share of more than 65% of total instant payments in the four countries.
EuroPA is aligned with the strategic objective of sovereignty and autonomy of Europe in payments through the adoption of European SEPA standards, building on the trust of leading European payment solutions and infrastructures now connected in their components in an innovative and simple way.
„Bancomat, Bizum and SIBS are bringing European payments to the next level through EuroPA, the European Payments Alliance, by achieving a significant milestone in cross-border payments in Europe. The scope of the alliance is expected to grow, extend to include additional use cases and expand to more countries (euro and non-euro), simplifying the way Europeans make payments. This initiative aims to strengthen the innovative and trusted European payment infrastructure.” – according to the press release.
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EuroPA stands for European Payments Alliance, this initiative shares the same principles envisioned by European Institutions to create a sovereign and robust payments market, we aim to build a Pan-European service that can profit from strong European brands that have become their user’s favourite payment method and the use of standards to connect their services to allow cross-border transactions.
Right now, EuroPA is formed by Bancomat, Bizum and SIBS, as an alliance between leading payment solutions in Italy, Spain and Portugal to enable interoperability across their solutions. The three solutions are working to build P2P interoperability and connect their services so that users from Italy, Spain and Portugal can send money -enabling the same user experience at home- to users from other countries seamlessly thanks to SEPA Inst credit transfers as the common payment rail.
EuroPA aims to allow its participants to have Pan-European reach, so the initiative is willing to engage with other European payment solutions and also work to build interoperability for other point of interaction payment use cases in the future.
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. It belongs to 113 Italian banks.
With more than 28.8 million users, 85,000 affiliated businesses and 12,000 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 1 billion instant transfers through Bizum, which represented the 90% of the instant 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 15 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.
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