Epi: Deutsche Bank, Bnp and Ing ask for public money to wage war on Paypal, Visa and Mastercard
The European Payment Initiative (Epi) – which includes banks such as Deutsche Bank, Bnp Paribas, Ing, UniCredit and Santander – need public funding to proceed. All the details
Public funding wanted.
Last year, sixteen of Europe's largest banks and credit card processors joined the European Payment Initiative (Epi) to create a payments giant capable of coping with the US-dominated "oligopoly".
Epi launched an appeal on Tuesday for public money , as private lenders are unwilling to raise all the money they need.
Card payments in Europe are in fact mainly processed by companies based in the United States. Four out of five transactions in Europe are handled by Mastercard and Visa, according to EuroCommerce, a lobbying group of European retailers.
Epi's goal is to deploy, starting from 2022, a payment network in competition with those of the American Visa and MasterCard.
Today Epi is looking to engage more banks and other payment operators by December to start rolling out its instant and card payment network. "Public funding would be nice," Epi CEO Martina Weimert told an event organized by the European Federation of Payment Institutions. “Let's not hide it: it will be a huge investment. It is expensive".
All the details.
WHAT IS EPI
The European Payments Initiative (Epi) was launched last July and became an interim company in December with 22 banks as shareholders.
The initiative aims to build and implement a new payment acceptance circuit to allow individuals to pay for their purchases without going through the acceptance networks of the two American giants Visa and MasterCard. It is precisely these infrastructures that allow you to connect a customer's bank with that of a merchant, allowing them to accept credit card payments.
This new device should make it possible to process card payments, but also wire transfers, direct debits and mobile payments.
PEER TO PEER TRANSITIONS ALREADY NEXT YEAR
According to CEO Weimart, EPI "will build a new system and largely replace a plethora of national systems to reduce fragmentation and overlaps in payments."
The goal of launching peer-to-peer transactions based on instant payments in 2022, followed by e-commerce.
THE BANKS BEHIND EPI
Banks behind the initiative include Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, ING, UniCredit and Santander. They currently process more than half of all payments in Europe.
THE FUNDING RECEIVED SO FAR
Epi has so far received more than 30 million euros from its promoters, the president of the European Payment Initiative told the FT last May.
A CRITICAL PHASE
Weimert said the EPI is now in a "critical phase" of the decision-making process in the coming weeks.
Banks and other Epi shareholders "can only contribute a little," Weimert said, without providing details on the investment needed. Precisely for this reason, "public funding would be nice," according to Weimart.
“It's a major change, so it's going to take some time. Anyone who tells you it's an easy and quick choice, well, they're not really trying to transform Europe's ecosystem, ”concluded Weimert.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/epi-deutsche-bank-bnp-e-ing-invocato-soldi-pubblici-per-fare-la-guerra-a-paypal-visa-e-mastercard/ on Wed, 17 Nov 2021 07:46:08 +0000.