It aspired to become a competitor of the Americans Visa and MasterCard. The European Payment Initiative (EPI) European payment service will enter the test phase at the end of the year, the banking consortium in charge of 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”, indicates EPI in a press release.
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 service “will be gradually extended to payments from individual to professional, to online purchases, then to point-of-sale payments”, continues the document, between the beginning of the year 2024 and 2025.
Sixteen partner banks
It will 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”, declared the general manager of the EPI Martina Weimert during 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 group also announces 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. 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. The alliance has 16 members in total.
A project that has reduced its ambitions
Announced in the summer of 2020, the European card scheme aimed to create a new unified pan-European payment solution, based on instant transaction technology, 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.