Bancomat to unleash digital payments in Italy
Italian interbank network Bancomat will launch its new digital payment service, Bancomat Pay.
Expected for “next autumn”
Via an agreement with SIA, Bancomat Pay will integrate the instant mobile payments Jiffy service, allowing PagoBancomat cardholders to pay, in stores and online, and to send and receive money in real time from their smartphone.
“With Bancomat Pay, we intend to take our first step to entering the world of payment services of the future where it is not just cash that is dematerialised but the card itself. Together with banks we want to be the facilitators and champions of change and innovation for the country”, says Alessandro Zollo, CEO of Bancomat.
This partnership will permit new payment services to be made available to PagoBancomat cardholders, based on technology solutions already created by SIA, in particular P2P payments.
Upon launch of Bancomat Pay – expected for “next autumn” – it will be made available to around five million users registered with Jiffy, at over 2,000 outlets, mainly “large-scale retail” ones, and on PagoPA for payments to the Italian public sector.
As reported last year, Jiffy was made available in over 150 outlets in Milan, Rome and Turin. The person-to-business (P2B) project was piloted in Milan and Bergamo in 2016.
According to Bancomat, it has about 37 million PagoBancomat cardholders and over 440 banks using its services.
It wants to develop the potential of its new service “far beyond its current market penetration”. No timelines or specifics on any of that.
Bancomat says it has a market share of around 80%, with more than €87 billion of payments.
In addition, 1.5 billion+ transactions annually are made at over 2.1 million POS. It is owned by 132 Italian banks.
SIA provides its services in 48 countries. In 2017, it managed 13.1 billion clearing transactions, 6.1 billion card transactions, 3.3 billion payments, 56.2 billion financial transactions and carried 784 terabytes of data on the network.
