Southern European Payment Systems Group in Talks to Add Partners

(Bloomberg) -- A partnership formed by Portuguese, Spanish and Italian payment services companies is in talks to add more firms to the group and expand in Europe.

“We’re already engaging in constructive discussions with various other payment methods, and our aspiration is to successfully integrate these solutions into our partnership within the upcoming year,” Fabrizio Burlando, the chief executive officer of Italian payments firm Bancomat SpA, said in an emailed response to questions.

Bancomat, Spain’s Bizum and Portugal’s Sibs SA in December announced a partnership for “interoperability,” so that users can make simple instant payments using their mobile phones across the three countries. They call the initiative the European Payments Alliance, or EuroPA, and want to play a role in offering services that can be used throughout the continent.

Discussions are taking place with payment “solutions” from other European countries, said Fernando Rodriguez Ferrer, chief international business officer at Bizum.

Users of the Sibs MB Way service will “soon” be able to send instant transfers to Bizum and Bancomat users, Sibs CEO Madalena Cascais Tome said.

The partners plan to combine the use of the infrastructure that’s already in place in each country, rather than build new systems, Bancomat’s Burlando said. The next “logical step” of the cooperation between the three firms will be to expand to in-store and e-commerce payments, he said.

Bancomat is owned by investors including lender Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, while Bizum’s shareholders include Banco Santander SA. Sibs, which manages Portugal’s main cash-machine system, is owned by Banco Comercial Portugues SA and other banks.

A separate European payments project called Wero is backed by major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA and Deutsche Bank AG. The European Payments Initiative is the company behind Wero.

“The EuroPA initiative is inclusive by design and open to other European payment solutions, including Wero,” Sibs CEO Tome said.

--With assistance from Jorge Zuloaga.