A group of 16 major Eurozone banks from Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands in July agreed to the creation a unified payment solution for consumers and merchants across Europe.
The European Commission, which will adopt its own strategy for retail payments in Europe later this year, fully supports the European payments initiative as a new, ambitious and European project. The Commission believes that EU citizens and businesses should benefit from fast, efficient and reliable payments solutions. The European payments initiative – EPI would be a critical and decisive step in that direction.
The ambition of EPI is to create a unified pan-European payment solution leveraging Instant Payments/SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst), offering a card for consumers and merchants across Europe, a digital wallet and P2P payments. The solution aims to become a new standard means of payment for European consumers and merchants in all types of transactions including in-store, online, cash withdrawal and “peer-to-peer” in addition to existing international payment scheme solutions.
“The European payments initiative fits into our ambition that European consumers and businesses should have access to fast, efficient and competitive payment solutions. I hope banks from other countries, innovative European fintechs and other European payment service providers will join the first 16 members, bringing their own expertise and assets to this ground-breaking project, and making it even more innovative and competitive at global level”, said Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President for an Economy that Works for People.
More than 50 percent of retail payment transactions in Europe are still done by cash today.
Existing digital payment solutions are fragmented in Europe and European citizens are still unable to pay digitally everywhere. Moreover, the Covid-19 crisis has underlined the need for a unified European digital payment solution. In this sense, EPI also aims to align the European payments ecosystem of banks, merchants and acquirers / payment services providers, thereby contributing to strengthening of the Single Market and the European digital agenda, according to a statement from ING Bank.
EPI is now launching its implementation phase. It is expected to become fully operational in 2022.
