The main European mobile payment solutions BANCOMAT, BIZUM and MB WAY, pioneers of interoperability, launch the first instant transactions

Lisbon, 13 November 2024 — With the aim of enabling pan-European and cross-border payments and promoting interoperability, BANCOMAT (Italy), Bizum (Spain and Andorra) and MB WAY/SIBS (Portugal) have made possible interoperability between their services and have carried out the first instant payment transactions, simplifying for their users the possibility of making instant payments between people using only the smartphone, identifying the recipient through easily accessible information, such as the saved telephone number in the address book.

‍

This launch, accompanied by a live demonstration that took place at the Web Summit, one of the largest technological events in the world, showcased the first real transactions between users of BANCOMAT, Bizum and MB WAY, through instant SEPA transfers and in collaboration with the financial institutions of the respective countries.

With the code name EuroPA, the European Payments Alliance, this launch, which took place less than a year after it was announced, represents only the first step towards interoperability between more than 45 million users and more than 182 financial institutions, which is expected to be widely available from 2025, mainly starting from Italy, Portugal and Spain, but with the intention of expanding throughout Europe and we are already in conversations with other interested markets and solutions.

In Spain, Bizum has collaborated closely with the banking entities CaixaBank, Santander, BBVA and Abanco for the development of this proof of concept. Once the service is enabled for users, the other banking entities affiliated with Bizum will be gradually incorporated.

In Italy, Intesa Sanpaolo is collaborating with BANCOMAT for the development of the infrastructure that will be gradually integrated by other Italian banks.

The EuroPA project underlines the importance of interoperability as a viable and high-potential solution that aims to meet the objectives of the Eurosystem, seeking to promote the adoption of pan-European instant transfers using existing infrastructures that have proven to be effective and widely adopted. This solution will make it possible to make cross-border payments to more than 45 million users using only the mobile number registered in the address book and who already made a total of 1.5 billion payments in 2023, demonstrating the impact and importance of these services in the European market.

With this initiative to connect different solutions, in which multidisciplinary work teams from the three payment solutions have worked in various fields, BANCOMAT, Bizum and MB WAY/SIBS are positioning themselves as pioneers in the creation of a pan-European cross-border payment network, whose main feature is an innovative, simple and effective UX and which lays the foundations for a more efficient, secure and universal payment experience, leveraging the strength of leading brands in their respective countries to connect services and infrastructures. existing ones that are trusted and familiar to users. At the same time, discussions are underway with other solutions that could join.

In addition, EuroPA does not focus solely on interoperability for peer-to-peer payments. Work is underway to extend this interoperability to other use cases in the future, such as e-commerce through P2B, such as for e-commerce, after the generalization of peer-to-peer payments.

Overall, the EuroPA project represents a significant step towards widespread interoperability and an efficient pan-European cross-border digital payment ecosystem, exploiting existing infrastructures and providing solutions already adapted to the needs and preferences of users.

‍