The European Payments Alliance, the initiative aiming to build a pan-European payment service, has taken another step towards achieving its goal, as five firms have agreed to explore a shared cross-border payments solution.
Italian payment provider Bancomat, Spanish payment service provider Bizum, MB WAY, a mobile payment solution in Portugal operated by SIBS, Nordic mobile payment solution Vipps MobilePay, and the European Payments Initiative (EPI), are joining forces under the European Payments Alliance (EuroPA) umbrella to explore solutions to rapidly address Europe’s sovereignty challenge in payments.
The new initiative aims to enable European citizens to send and receive payments seamlessly across the continent.
EuroPA and EPI say that their collaboration is driven by a shared interest in exploring a joint solution that leverages the adoption and existing capabilities of each of these participants through enhanced interconnectivity.
Ultimately, they aim to cover all use cases, including person-to-person and commercial payments both online and in-store, across the European markets of the participating solutions. The ongoing study is expected to conclude by the end of this summer.
This agreement will initially cover 15 European countries, collectively representing over 382 million inhabitants (84 per cent of the European Union population and Norway), enabling them to continue using their preferred digital payment solutions both locally and across Europe, and provide an approach for markets with no solution so far.
They explain that interconnecting existing solutions will enable European sovereignty and independence much faster than a standalone solution, and that their goal is shared by both the European Commission and Eurosystem.
The news comes shortly after EuroPA facilitated collaboration between Bancomat, Bizum, and MB WAY to enable instant peer-to-peer transactions between users in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, using only mobile phone numbers.
In 2024 alone, Bancomat, Bizum and MB WAY collectively processed over two billion payments, capturing over 65 per cent of all instant payments in their respective markets, highlighting the extent of their adoption.
