EPI: an initiative to pool our efforts with other European players
The European Payments Initiative (EPI) launches a payment solution in Europe and strengthens its position through two acquisitions and additional shareholders
The “customer” trend: instant payment
EPI is based on instant payment, a solution that accounts for 15% of all money transfers in Europe. With an exponential growth in popularity among private individuals and corporate cash-ins, volumes will increase fivefold by 2026, largely thanks to EPI.
BNP Paribas has helped to breathe new life into instant transfers by providing its customers with full information on payments made and making transactions traceable. Its four dedicated payment factories (instant money transfer, standard SEPA money transfers, direct debits and international money transfers), built with innovative market players such as ICON or Bleckwen, are key assets in its architecture for rapidly developing new offerings.
Cloud and technological security, 2 of BNP Paribas’ differentiating factors
The independence and sovereignty of payments are also reflected at Group level. Thanks to its own Cloud, BNP Paribas has the capacity to store all the data from its payment activities with the approval of the regulators. It’s a guarantee of security for customers and a guarantee of agility for IT GROUP’s 1,000 payment experts in Europe - who benefit from the dedicated cloud developed with IBM.
Over and above the robustness of our IT infrastructures, security is an absolute imperative the for making payments. BNP Paribas has a Datahub, which centralises all payment data (170 to 200 million data items every month).
3 key facts about fraud
- Card fraud in 2021 was at its lowest level since data collection began
- It fell by 12% thanks to the introduction of strong authentication for customers
- 63% of the total value of card fraud involves cross-border transactions
By using this data effectively, we can combat almost 70% of fraud, thanks in particular to real-time transaction analysis solutions and artificial intelligence.
© Thierry Laborde, COO of BNP Paribas, Head of CPBS, Pierre Salignat, Head of IT Cards and Innovative Payments, BNP Paribas, Nicolas Benady, CEO of Swan, Yoan Mathiot-Maire, Head of Marketing Development FFT, Emmanuelle François, Head of Axepta Europe, BNP Paribas, Neil Pein, Global Head of Payments Transformation, BNP Paribas.
The “merchant” trend: unified and invisible commerce
The customer experience is one of our retail customers’ top priorities. Commerce has become “unified” between the online and offline worlds: digital technologies, such as QR codes, must bridge the gap between the real world and the web in the purchasing process.
Retailers are no longer just looking for cash solutions. They want payment solutions that optimise the customer journey: click and collect, payment after dispatch, mixed basket, refunds. These solutions can sometimes be completely invisible to customers, as in the case of the AXEPTA solution, which offers payment terminals on the A79 motorway in France.
The customer experience is one of our retail customers’ top priorities. Commerce has become “unified” between the online and offline worlds: digital technologies, such as QR codes, must bridge the gap between the real world and the web in the purchasing process.
AXEPTA has also developed an omnichannel purchasing pathway for the French Tennis Federation: payment online, in shop or on the move. This solution can handle the 250,000 transactions carried out on average during the French Open.
BNP Paribas has also invested in innovation using APIs, application programming interfaces. In France, Castorama uses one of our fifteen APIs for instant refunds. For its part, the Swan Banking-as-a-Service platform integrates our APIs to offer banking features to its own customers.
One “customer” and one “merchant” innovation to watch
Who hasn’t been inconvenienced by a blocked direct debit on a streaming site because their bank card has expired? On e-commerce sites and applications, the tedious task of updating credit card details often falls to the user... with a potential loss of sales for the seller - or even an increase in CHURN.
Thanks to its presence both on the merchant side with AXEPTA and on the customer side via the commercial banks, BNP Paribas is preparing a new service that will send the merchant the updated card data when the card is renewed. This would be a godsend for recurring payments, such as subscriptions, whose collection would no longer be interrupted.
On the merchant side, digital marketplaces are flourishing. In response to this opportunity, BNP Paribas is to create a Fintech dedicated to payments. Its aim is to provide the best possible service for the complexity of collections between sellers, buyers and intermediaries (B2B, B2C, B2B2C, etc.). The launch is planned within the next few months.