Among other things, it aims to compete with the American Mastercard and Visa. The European payment service “European Payment Initiative” (known as EPI) will enter the test phase at the end of the year, the banking consortium responsible for its development announced on Tuesday. “The digital wallet with person-to-person payment will be launched in a pilot phase with the first users at the end of 2023 in France and Germany,” EPI said in a press release published on Tuesday.
Concretely, users will be able to transfer money between them, from bank account to bank account, free of charge and in a few seconds. This option will be offered, alongside the traditional transfer, via the customer’s bank application or a dedicated application on a mobile phone. This functionality “is essential” for EPI, underlined the deputy general manager of BNP Paribas Thierry Laborde, who supervises the means of payment within the French Banking Federation (FBF), during a conference call. This service “will be gradually extended to payments from individual to professional, to online purchases, then to point-of-sale payments”, continues the document. In-store payment will be the last step, in 2025.
16 partner banks, including 6 French
The EPI system will initially be accessible in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. “These markets together represent more than 60% of electronic transactions in Europe, it is a very good basis for development,” said EPI director general Martina Weimert at a press conference. EPI has also announced the purchase of two start-ups, the Dutch Currence iDEAL and the Luxembourg payment solutions provider Payconiq International (PQI), for an undisclosed amount.
The six main French banks – Crédit Mutuel, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, La Banque Postale, BPCE, Société Générale – are shareholders in the consortium, as is the payment player Worldline. In total, the alliance has 16 members, including the Dutch ING and the German Deutsche Bank. EPI also announced that it had four new partner banks: the Belgian Belfius, the German DZ Bank (which had nevertheless left it a year ago) and two Dutch heavyweights, ABN Amro and Rabobank.
A system in recovery, after several attempts
First announced in the summer of 2020, the European PPE card scheme aimed to create a new unified pan-European payment solution, based on instant transaction technology. The objective was in particular to offer an alternative to the sector giants Visa and Mastercard. But the project has since suffered numerous defections and has consequently reduced its ambitions.
The card component was abandoned at the beginning of last year, the consortium refocusing on a digital wallet (or “wallet” in English) and instant payment technology, which allows transfers to be made in seconds. The project “aims to see Europe have a European payment system, a first”, insisted the deputy managing director of BNP Paribas Thierry Laborde, for whom a digital wallet “which succeeds can only be interbank, maybe only European”.