Julio César Fernández / Director of Business Development and Operations Support for Technology Services at Cecabank
Banks and payment providers offer customers solutions that improve their payment experience
Cecabank processed more than 123 million transactions in 2022
The second session of EBADay, one of the largest congresses in the world of payments in Europe, is taking place today in Madrid. It will undoubtedly address the exponential digital transformation process that payments are currently undergoing. Banks and payment service providers (PSPs) are offering customers a wide range of technological solutions that enhance the payment experience, making payments faster and more convenient, while still ensuring their security. Technology not only changes the user experience, but also the internal processes of the banks that support these new practices.
In this regard, the ongoing progress of instant, account-to-account digital payments in Europe is evidence of remarkable growth in the digitalisation of transactions to the detriment of cash and opens up a scenario of accelerated development of commercial payments on account at the retail level. In Spain, new models of digital payments have grown steadily since 2020 More than 90% of the Spanish banking population regularly uses them. The Bizum instant payment platform via mobile phone, which currently boasts 23 million users and processed 120 million transactions in 2022, has become a standard in the Spanish market for person-to-person payments, and is now expanding into new payment methods such as e-commerce, lottery payments and contributions to NGOs. Bizum payments are implemented as an instant payment under SEPA standards via the Spanish clearing house. A record figure of 823 million instant transfers were processed in Spain in 2022, representing 49% of all transfers processed through the Spanish national system, making Spain the European leader in terms of the penetration of this type of payment. In this context, Cecabank, as a processor of instant transfers (Bizum and iSCT Core), processed over 123 million transactions for the banks it services in said year.
An existing challenge is the consolidation of instant cross-border payments, something that European infrastructures (RT1 and TIPS) already enable, although there is still room for improvement in their development. This seems to be the focus of the legislation under consideration in the EU, which aims to make instant payments in euro available to all citizens and businesses with a bank account in the EU and in the countries of the European Economic Area. Therefore, this regulation should entail a gradual migration towards instant transfers from other payment methods.
The transformation that payment service providers are undergoing towards a more open and competitive model means that banks need to continuously rethink their digital strategy and respond in an agile, efficient and resilient manner to change.
In addition to the aforementioned challenges, other large-scale projects, such as the potential creation of the digital euro, are also on the agenda. PSPs will need to be prepared to facilitate the deployment of this new instrument, allowing it to coexist coherently and amicably with other payment methods.
At Cecabank, in our role as a one-stop shop for payments capable of processing any payment instrument, we believe we have a privileged perspective to continue accompanying our customers in the changes ahead in an environment fraught with significant uncertainty.
