CEO of ING, Pinar Abay, advocates for accelerating the development of European payment system, Wero.
European banks are collaborating to create a more integrated and unified cross-border payment system in Europe, with the European Payments Initiative (EPI) playing a key role. This collaboration involves forming partnerships among member institutions and adopting interoperability strategies to bridge fragmented national payment solutions.
However, progress towards full unification is a decade-long endeavour due to several challenges. These include uneven adoption across countries, the complexity of harmonizing technical, commercial, and ownership aspects, and the need for stronger political support at the EU level. In addition, banks face technical challenges such as meeting cross-border regulatory requirements, ensuring robust fraud resilience, and integrating new ISO 20022 payment messaging standards under tight timelines.
Pinar Abay, head of retail banking at ING Group and a member of the EPI board, has urged European banks to speed up and compromise in creating the joint payment system, Wero. Abay believes that the industry should continue what's already working in the market to build a sovereign European payment system.
ING's German subsidiary is set to offer Wero to its ten million customers this month. The European Payment Initiative (EPI), the organization responsible for operating Wero, has highlighted the need for unification through digital tools like the digital euro, which could simplify payments and reduce fees for merchants.
Despite some banks initially joining the EPI but later withdrawing, Abay calls for more collaboration and pragmatism from the European banking industry. Abay states that it's a risk for Europe not to have its own cross-border payment system, given the current global context.
Abay also notes that Europe sometimes takes too long to implement scalable systems due to everyone having an opinion about the solution. Talks are ongoing with Austria regarding the accessibility of Wero, and Abay hopes for collaboration with other markets like Italy, Spain, and other countries to build a sovereign European payment system.
Wero is a pan-European instant payment system currently accessible in Germany, Belgium, and France. The statement by Pinar Abay was made in an interview with business magazine "Capital" on Wednesday. Abay believes that Europe needs to develop a European dimension in various areas of banking, including cross-border payment systems.
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