Italian bank card payments operator CartaSi is to offer the Visa Direct person-to-person money transfer service to its 800 member banks by September 2003.
CartaSi's commitment coincides with today's introduction of new EU regulations on cross-border credit transfers. From this date, banks within the Eurozone will no longer be able to charge more for low value (below EUR12,500) EU cross-border transfers than they do for domestic transfers.
CartaSi joins Sweden's ForeningsSparbanken and Spanish banks BBVA and La Caixa in committing to the Visa service.
The Italian card group has also promised allegiance to MasterCard MoneySend, an equivalent P2P service from MasterCard, which was unveiled two weeks ago.