EBA CLEARING confirmed today at the EBAday conference in Edinburgh and at the e-Commerce Netcomm Forum in Milan the strong support its MyBank e-payment solution has secured among key market players in Italy.
The Italian community has embraced MyBank, with the major banks supporting the initiative: Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane, Iccrea Banca and Banca Sella. Together, these banks represent over 75 percent of the Italian payments market.
They will bring with them key Italian household names, such as Banzai.it (Italy's largest online shopping concentrator), Fratelli Carli (the provider of Italy's leading mail order olive oil brand "Olio Carli"), IBS - www.ibs.it (Italy's largest online seller of books) and 24 ORE Group (the main Italian multimedia publishing organisation specialised in business, financial and professional information).
"We look forward to contributing to the implementation of the MyBank solution across Italy in 2013," said Marco Loro, Head of online & mobile payments, Banca Sella s.p.a.. "We believe this pan-European solution will put our bank and our corporate customers at a competitive advantage in a fully integrated European market. Together, we will be able to offer consumers one highly trusted payment environment for all their online purchases throughout Europe." "The Italian e-merchant community is very supportive of this secure and simple e-payment method, which has the potential to be used by consumers everywhere in Italy and throughout Europe," said Roberto Liscia, President of Italy's e-merchant association Netcomm. "MyBank will enable the Italian e-merchants to more easily expand their business and to also reach customers who do not feel comfortable using any of the existing e-payment methods."
In this way, the MyBank initiative aims at meeting both the requirements of the Italian government's digitisation agenda and, at the same time, the European Commission's policy objectives as stated in its Green Paper "Towards an integrated future for card, internet and mobile payments". "Since the time we announced our project at EBAday last year, there has been growing support for the idea of putting in place a pan-European online banking based e-payment solution," said Giorgio Ferrero, Chairman of EBA CLEARING, at the Company's Shareholders Meeting held in Edinburgh on 14th May 2012. "The European e-merchant community, which we consulted from the start and which is closely involved in our pilot, welcomed our initiative right away. I would also like to add that an increasing number of national governments and public agencies are beginning to see a Europe-wide e-payment solution as part of their strategy to improve administrative services while at the same time cutting cost. We are very pleased that everything is ready for the launch of the MyBank Pilot on 4th June, only a year after we launched this e-payment initiative."
The announcement of the EBA CLEARING Chairman was followed by the successful sending of the first MyBank test transaction between two banks, which took place at EBAday on 15th May 2012. The demonstration involved the French BRED Banque Populaire and Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane (ICBPI) and marked a prelude to the technical pilot phase of the MyBank project in early June 2012. It is planned to successively make available the MyBank solution to consumers across Europe from early 2013 on.