Poland’s BLIK set to join European payment interoperability coalition
The collaboration among a growing number of payment solutions in Europe has received BLIK’s candidacy. The aim would be to add BLIK's Polish and Slovak users to the coalition.
Another flag could be added to the already long list of solutions working together to create a common European way of paying by connecting local wallet solutions across borders.
BLIK with operations in Poland and Slovakia would be joining the collaboration that already includes Bancomat (Italy), Bizum (Spain, Andorra), SIBS/MB Way (Portugal), Vipps MobilePay (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland), and EPI, whose Wero wallet is present in several countries, including France, Germany, Belgium, and soon the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
BLIK is the first solution to open talks on joining the pan-European project designed to make payments between solutions possible across Europe.
The cooperation between the many solutions is expected to make it possible, already this year and next year, for example, for a BLIK user to send money to Bizum though they use two different payment solutions. Initially, this will apply to private users, with in-store payments expected to follow next year.
The collaboration among the solutions was announced earlier this year, when the parties agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding announcing the positive outcome of the feasibility phase to establish a central interoperability between the different payment solutions — in other words, to invest in making them work across systems, so users can send and receive money across borders and between different currencies. The aim is to create a pan-European, interconnected payment network that works across several countries, currencies, and local providers. This work is already underway.
BLIK has now confirmed its interest in joining the initiative, aligned with the partners' approach of jointly building and funding a central interoperability infrastructure. In Poland, BLIK is a major provider of payment solutions for person-to-person transfers as well as for in-store and online payments.
Well over one in four Europeans are expected to be able to benefit from the common European payments interoperability, which links together many nationally tailored payment solutions into a broader European payment system.
The coalition is open to all European countries, including Switzerland and other non-euro markets.
Contact for media:
Klaudia Rombalska
BLIK’s press office
klaudia.rombalska@clearcom.pl
