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Sunday, July 7, 2013

Six Polish banks join hands for a mobile payments system to take on card schemes


            Six Banks in Poland viz Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Bank Zachodni WBK, BRE Bank, ING Bank Śląski and PKO Bank Polsk, have a 70% share in Poland’s electronic banking market. These 6 banks have joined hands to form a joint venture. 

          The joint venture main aim is to define a common standard for mobile payments, which if successful, will cut down the reliance on Visa and MasterCard in the Polish eBanking arena.  The new standards will be developed under the guidance of the national regulator.

The offering is modeled around PKO Bank's IKO app, which was launched in March and lets customers make in-store payments and ATM withdrawals by keying in a code generated by the app. Customers can also send money to recipients by entering their mobile phone number, like Barclays Pingit in the UK.

The proposed system is designed to bypass card firms, a fact that PKO's MD of electronic banking, Wojciech Bolanowski, admitted at MobeyDay last month, Visa was "not happy about".
Bank Millennium CEO Boguslaw Kott has openly admitted that the group is challenging Visa and MasterCard, telling Reuters: "This will be a more competitive system compared to the credit card system. The credit card system will probably be put under a question mark in the future."

            The differentiator between the new Polish Collaboration in comparison with like Spain and the UK, is that the Polish system has the backing of only financial institutions and not a combination of telcos and financial institutions.


            None of the six will have a dominating position, each using the same platform and then adding their own extra features, while the group says it is also open to bringing other banks and acquirers onboard.

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