As first European bank, Erste Bank Hungary – a subsidiary of the Austrian Erste Group since 1997 – provides an own system for processing request-to-pay (R2P).
The possibilities in payment have been extended by this new standard to send an active payment request from recipient to payer. With the customised solution on the basis of valantic’s Real Time Payment Engine (RTPE), Erste Bank Hungary now provides a modularly structured payment hub solution. In addition to the instant payment functionality, the system provides the option to send payment requests which have to be initiated within five seconds. The regulations of the National Bank of Hungary even surpass the guideline catalogue for the SEPA R2P model which, however, will not be agreed before November 2020. Measured on the number of customers, branches and cash machines, Erste Bank Hungary is among the top three banks in Hungary.
Identification via telephone number or e-mail
After a national go-live, Erste Bank was the only bank in Hungary offering request-to-pay functions. At first, only bank-internal payment requests have been possible but since July the R2P service is in use in two other large banks in Hungary. Within the first months, more than 500 internal payment requests have been performed. For this purpose, valantic’s Payment Hub not only supports IBAN identification: identification via mobile phone number is possible and even an e-mail address can be used as ID. valantic’s Payment Hub supports all relevant SWIFT and ISO 20022 standards in the pain, pacs and camt format and is multi-client as well as multi-channel capable. Thus, payment instructions can be processed across different channels, such as e-banking or corporate banking. In Hungary, real-time payment services gain more and more importance - not only in retail and online trading but also in the public and administration sector. In the long term, a majority of debit services is to be replaced so that payment service providers, companies and end customers can benefit equally.
Banks connect competence and innovation
“Banks enjoy high public trust, unlike most of the newer payment service providers. With the new model, the trust in banks is combined with modern payment services and assures banks a long-lasting customer loyalty,” said Réka Schreiber, Head of Operations at Erste Bank Hungary. The study “The Ultimate Guide to the Future of Banking“ by MX Technologies Inc. reinforces this thought: While only three per cent trust in bank branches, more than 80 per cent of the consumers in the US use mobile banking on a weekly basis. 93 per cent of them have more trust in banks than in big tech companies and their payment services. valantic’s project with Erste Bank Hungary is regarded as reference for other banks: “In a webinar, we had the opportunity to present our project with Erste Bank Hungary to more than 40 interested representatives from the financial industry. We also demonstrated our prototype for an application which can be integrated directly at the cash desk. Contactless and immediate payment on request is thus possible,” said Sertac Cetiner, Head of Payments at valantic Financial Services Automation.
Banking of the Future
With modern technology, banks are working to improve trusted competence in financial issues, secure money storage and technological innovations for the future. The valantic Payment Hub plays an important role as a technologically developed and secure solution.
“R2P is a promising concept but requires a matching infrastructure. This infrastructure has been created with valantic’s RTPE and perfectly fulfils all our requirements,“ said Réka Schreiber from Erste Bank Hungary. In the RTPE, all instructions are validated against format rules, EPC rules and bank-internal rules on different levels and a high-performance mapping engine allows the conversion from any format used by the payment submitter. The settlement processes are centrally controlled and a Single Point of Truth enables a central filing of all processed instructions, payments and bookings. valantic’s solution offers sufficient potential for local adjustments to continue to keep pace with the modern expectations of both retail and customers.