Long in slow motion and considered a competitor to Visa and Mastercard, the European payment service European Payment Initiative (EPI) is relaunching by announcing a rollout schedule with a trial phase at the end of the year for individuals. “The digital wallet with person-to-person payment will be launched in a pilot phase with first users in late 2023 in France and Germany,” EPI said in a press release published Tuesday.
Specifically, users will be able to transfer money between them, from bank account to bank account, for free and in a few seconds. This option will be offered, along with the traditional transfer, through the customer’s banking application or a dedicated application on a mobile phone. This functionality “is essential” for EPI, stressed BNP Paribas deputy general manager Thierry Laborde, who oversees means of payment within the French Banking Federation (FBF), during a conference call. It allows “installing the system, the brand, the reflection,” he continued.
Payment in store in 2025
The six main French banks (Crédit Mutuel, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, La Banque Postale, BPCE, Société Générale) are shareholders of the consortium, as is payment player Worldline. The alliance has 16 members in total, including Dutch ING and German Deutsche Bank.
The service “will be open for the second time to payments for professionals, then to online commerce and that without terminals (via a QR code as for self-service bicycle rental services, Ed)”, adds the general manager of PPE Martina Weimert. Payment in store will be the last step, in 2025. PPE services will be available in five countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
EPI will be based on the Paylib platform in France
The consortium announced in parallel the purchase of two start-ups, the Dutch Currence iDEAL and the Luxembourg payment solutions provider Payconiq International (PQI), for an undisclosed amount. The total budget, however, amounts to hundreds of millions of euros, in technologies but also in communication to make these solutions known to the general public.
EPI also announced that it had four new partner banks: Belgian Belfius, German DZ Bank (which however had left it a year ago) and two Dutch heavyweights, ABN Amro and Rabobank. In France, EPI intends to base its launch on the platform common to French banks Paylib, launched in 2013 and available on Android devices.
The abandoned card component to refocus on a digital wallet
Announced in the summer of 2020, the European PPE Cards scheme aimed to create a new unified pan-European payment solution, based on instant transaction technology, in particular to offer an alternative to industry giants Visa and Mastercard. But since then the project has suffered numerous defections and has consequently scaled back its ambitions. The card component was abandoned early last year, the consortium refocusing on a digital wallet and instant payment technology, which allows transfers to be made in seconds.
The project “has as its objective that Europe have a European payment system, the first one”, insists Thierry Laborde, for whom a successful digital wallet “can only be interbank, it can only be European”. It also reflects “the absolute desire of the banks to remain present in the payments market”, observes Martina Weimert.
Europeans, who have never managed to compete with Visa and Mastercard, don’t want newcomers like Apple Pay to drive them out of the payments game entirely. Launched in 2014, Apple’s internal system is also in the crosshairs of the European Commission, which accused it last year of blocking competition.
Source: BFM TV
