The recent widespread use of contactless technology has confirmed the usefulness of open payment, i.e. the use of contactless banking supports to access and pay for mobility services. Open payment provides a better user experience by avoiding the need to use a ticket office or terminal to buy a ticket. Open payment is a subset of a more global concept, called account-based ticketing, in which access rights to services are no longer stored on a private physical support (ticket, subscriber card), but in a centralized system, managing the banking medium as an access identifier. Numerous transport systems, particularly in Europe (London, Dijon, Lyon, etc.) have met with great success among users and are becoming a key dynamic innovation factor within local authorities.

Today, EU countries operate with their own national card schemes, and 10 European countries have national card schemes that do not accept cards from other EU countries. In order to overcome this fragmentation of the European retail payments market, in particular for point-of-sale and online payments, the European Payments Initiative (EPI) aims to create a unified European payment system by 2022. . The scope of the EPI includes all types of retail transactions such as payments in shops, online, cash withdrawals, wallets and peer-to-peer (P2P).

The EPI not only allows for intra-European cross-border payments, but also for real-time clearing and settlement based on instant payment.

To date, 16 major European banks from five countries are leading this initiative and it is expected that other payment service providers will join in.Establishing pan-European payments is an important step for Europe’s autonomy and resilience, as it reduces the dependency on non-European global players who do not necessarily act in the EU interest.

The benefits also extend to other areas such as improving customer experience, enhancing cost-effectiveness and increasing security.

Payments hybridization, which was under consideration in companies well before the EPI, processes the card payment value chain and the SEPA credit transfer value chain under a single information service (IS) within an organization, taking the best of both payment methods.

Performance optimization is the main benefit of de-compartmentalising these payment processes.Although many companies have taken the first steps towards payments hybridization at the organizational level, IS convergence is still in transition for many of them today. Within the new EPI environment, payment hybridization is becoming a strategic priority .

The directive has accelerated the need for organizations to evolve towards dismantling payment silos. The success of such a scenario will depend on the ability of players to use the correct aspects of card payments and the emergence of SCT-IP and new services such as request-to-pay through efficient and pragmatic payment marketing (physical cards and wallet supports).