European banks to create cross-border instant payments system • NFCW

Sixteen major European banks have announced plans to jointly create a new company that will be tasked with delivering “a seamless, competitive and unified payment solution” for in-store, online and P2P payments across Europe.

Founding members of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) include banks in five Eurozone countries — France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. They are BBVA^[4], BNP Paribas^[5], Groupe BPCE^[6], CaixaBank^[7], Commerzbank^[8], Crédit Agricole^[9], Crédit Mutuel^[10], Deutsche Bank^[11], Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband^[12], DZ Bank Group^[13], ING^[14], KBC Group^[15], La Banque Postale^[16], Banco Santander^[17], Société Générale^[18] and UniCredit^[19].

“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 banks say.

“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