Frankfurt There is a lot of movement in European payments at the moment. Now, with the consulting firm Bearingpoint and the Swiss stock exchange operator Six, two new players are entering the scene who want to stir up the payment market with their own initiative.
The plan from Bearingpoint and Six is based on a standard that is comparatively new in the euro area, known under the technical term Request to Pay (RtP).
Customers no longer receive payment requests from billers by post or e-mail, but directly in their online or mobile banking and only have to confirm them there with a few clicks. Six has already set up a system in Switzerland that connects billing and payment directly and is used by millions of customers.
The two partners will present their initiative on Wednesday at the Handelsblatt conference Banken Tech. “In the current situation in particular, we see considerable growth potential for an RtP system in Europe,” says Dieter Goerdten, Head of Products and Solutions in the Banking division at Six.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The continent’s major banks are currently still struggling to establish a European payment system, known as the European Payment Initiative or EPI for short. The project aims to make Europe less dependent on foreign suppliers. When it comes to credit and debit cards, the US companies Mastercard and Visa are dominant in Europe. But the market for digital payments is also increasingly being shaped by US providers such as Apple Pay or PayPal.
In addition, many German banks have largely withdrawn from the payment business in the past and are now struggling to regain market share. Investments of 1.5 billion euros are planned.
31 major European banks, including the German savings banks and two payment service providers, have that EPI-Project started. But at a meeting in late November, the financial institutions failed to reach an agreement on financing EPI.
Against this background, Bearingpoint and Six are now starting their new system: “The bank account threatens to lose its central role in payment processing, and this puts one of the central points of contact with their customers at risk,” says Thomas Steiner. Global Head of Banking and Capital Markets at Bearingpoint.
Goerdten and Steiner hope to be able to convince the banks that their new system can help to strengthen the traditional account in competition with other payment options. “RtP offers the institutes the opportunity to secure and expand the payment business,” says Goerdten.
Merchants and other billers would benefit from significantly lower costs, and customers would have the advantage that all invoices would be collected in a single place.
As platform providers, Six and Bearingpoint would earn money with the new system through a transaction fee.
Introducing the new technology is considered tedious
The RtP technology is still comparatively new in the uniform euro payment area, which is known under the abbreviation Sepa (Single Euro Payment Area). At the market launch of Sepa RtP last June, the industry exercised restraint: “There are hardly any efforts among financial service providers to launch products based on RtP use,” according to a study by the software company PPI.
According to the experts, that does not mean that customers are not interested in the new process. According to a survey by the European Banking Association (Eba), 80 percent of companies in Europe would be willing to use RtP-based banking products.
One possible reason for the reluctance: For financial institutions, the introduction of RtP is associated with considerable effort. From the start of the project until it is ready for the market, PPI expects a period of 18 to 24 months for implementation.
Six and Bearingpoint believe that this can also go faster: “If we manage to generate enough interest in the German banking market in the first six months, we are convinced that the customers of the participating banks will be able to use the RtP service as early as the beginning of 2023 “, Says Steiner.
Alternative to direct debit
Six has already gained experience in Switzerland: According to the stock exchange operator, 2.4 million customers now use the eBill system to pay their bills, an increase of 25 percent compared to the previous year. 4000 billers and 97 banks are connected to eBill. Around 97 percent of private bank customers in Switzerland could use the service, reports Goerdten.
In the euro area, Six and Bearingpoint want to start paying bills in the same way as eBill, but also offer an online payment system. “In perspective, the system can also be used as an alternative to direct debit,” explains Stefan Schütt, head of the RtP initiative at BearingPoint.
The two partners know that the start of their new payment system can only work if they succeed in attracting as many participants as possible in the shortest possible time “The key to success lies in the rapid establishment of an ecosystem with as many banks, payers and billers as possible”, says Steiner.
In Germany, the goal is to convince at least one pillar of the German banking industry of the concept within one year. Bearingpoint wants to get either the cooperative banks, the savings banks or as many private banks as possible on board.
More: “A new generation of e-commerce” – Visa crypto boss believes in online shopping with crypto money