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“Innovation in payment services: from sepa to psd2: OBEP, P2P, Mobile and Instant Payment”

“Innovation in payment services: from sepa to psd2: OBEP, P2P, Mobile and Instant Payment”

05-05-2016

Results of research conducted by CeTIF with the support of AlmavivA, ICBPI and TAS Group

Milan, 5 May 2016 – Over the past years the Payment EcoSystem has been challenged by several changes in the market landscape, EU legislation, increased competition by new entrants, digital channels success to name a few. Italian Banks have identified which levers they should activate to stay abreast of the changing playing field. However, there are still some obstacles to the full implementation of such models.

CeTIF 2016 Research, conducted from October 2015 through January 2016 on a panel of 9 banking groups, allowed them to evaluate how these financial institutions are moving forward and which aspects require higher investments in order to stay competitive on the market.

The results show how Italian Banks are still lagging in web- and mobile- channels of innovative payments offerings. At the same time, payment methods and channels are key components of their strategy. The banks want to increase their investments in light of the upcoming implementation of systems to support instant payments.

Seventy-two percent of banks and payment institutions answering a survey conducted by CeTIF in September 2015 view instant payments to be the biggest opportunity and a relevant market-disrupting factor, no matter which payment scenario is considered (P2P, P2B or B2B).

More than the known issues around proximity payments, today’s market players are committed to finding a more precise definition of the “wallet” proposition and of “value added services”, with the aim of conceiving a sustainable and profitable value proposition. Data demonstrate Italian banks have largely invested in the identification and integration of value-add services, mostly in mobile channels, and they will continue to invest in the near future along these trends of customers getting more savvy.

Value added services are considered fundamental to customer loyalty and for maintaining market share in the face of an increasing number of aggressive competitors and big International players like Google, Facebook, Apple e Samsung.

To compete, the largest investments banks will make in the coming years will be devoted to customer payment insight, promoting a big data approach to analysis with enrichment from external data sources. They will also pursue visual and innovative presentation of the results, which enables new innovative services and products, both real time and context driven.

Ultimately, it appears evident recent investments in organizational models adopted by banks to enter SEPA have created a solid basis for the construction of their own innovative approaches to the development of product and services. Yet, Some specific open issues remain regarding both the EU legislation framework and the technological innovation. If not approached in the right way, these issues can lead banks to loose significant market share in the payment services business.

It is therefore essential that payment services players be prepared to face the new market challenges, adapting their product offering to the needs of customers who are more interconnected and have increasing and fast evolving needs.

Riccardo Aidala, Financial Services Manager AlmavivA, added “Instant Payment will establish a new way of thinking money, increasingly technology-based. The change will be systemic and will bring into the limelight new operators and increasingly evolved technologies. The greatest difficulty in this process will be the co-existence with existing payment methods, a challenge that we in AlmavivA are ready to meet thanks to our in-depth knowledge of the sector and our System Integrator skills, for the benefit of the market as a whole.”

“In order to give a concrete answer and be in line with this trend, ICBPI has undertaken a number of initiatives to cover the entire value chain of Instant Payments, starting from ZAC - the P2P solution already adopted by several customer banks - and ending up in the integration of new clearing infrastructures that will enable the interchange of real time interbank payments and financial as well as technical intermediation,” declares Giovanni Carnelli, Instant Payments Programme Leader ICBPI.

“To ensure the necessary flexibility to adapt to fast-changing scenarios the bank must be able to rely on a network access messaging platform that can, in a highly dynamic and secure way, handle multiple application protocols both market established and emergent. These are among the key capabilities our company has built in its 30+ years as core competencies,” said Massimiliano Quattrocchi, Director of Payment Systems at TAS Group.