Belgium-based payments systems vendor Clear2Pay has been awarded a EUR130,000 grant by the Flemish Innovation Institute for Science and Technology (IWT) which it will use to support the development of its Sepa direct debit technology.
The vendor says it was granted a subsidy for the development of its Multipurpose Pan-European Direct Debit (M-PEDD) project on the basis of its open payment framework, a full service oriented architecture (SOA) environment.
The M-PEDD development broadens the scope of the b2c application of Sepa direct debit to b2b and g2c (government-to-consumer). Clear2Pay says electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) functionality will be added to the product.
Mark Hartley, VP of strategy and marketing, Clear2Pay, says: "Banks face huge upfront investment throughout the various Sepa stages. With our prototype we can demonstrate the benefits SDD (Sepa direct debit) can bring to banks ahead of the official implementation deadlines, in order to facilitate their own strategy and business case."
Earlier this month Gerard Hartsink, chair of the European Payments Council (EPC), warned that Europe's banks will miss the first Sepa deadline for direct debits because of delays in passing the new Payment Services Directive (PSD).