Mobile & Digital Payments

Best Practice

BACKGROUND

The steady growth of the digital market has enabled a rapid spread of mobile devices around the world and in particular in Italy, where the market penetration of smartphones has now reached 83% (among the top three countries in the world), but where the use of alternative payment tools with respect to cash is less widespread than in other European countries². The entry of new international players such as Apple and Samsung into the Italian market has provided a further boost to mobile payments. A context in which Financial Institutions can play a leading role towards current and future Customers, as demonstrated by the results of the Reply Survey³ on Millennials, where it was shown that the latter are more likely to adopt the use of an innovative payment tool if offered by their Bank.

  1. Global Digital Report 2018; We are Social, Hootsuite;
  2. Bank of Italy;
  3. "European Millennials and payment systems” survey: from cash to the new Appsʺ, Reply, November 2016.

Payments Today

We are witnessing the proliferation of innovative payment tools capable of exploiting the potential offered by the new technologies (e.g. e-commerce payments, m-commerce, P2P fund transfers, NFC payments, etc.), which promise to radically change consumer payment habits. Moreover, financial institutions have understood how to exploit the potential of smartphones to drive the growth of cashless payments.

A SUCCESS CASE

e*finance Consulting Reply supported one of the leading players in the Italian issuing and acquiring market to develop their mobile and digital payments strategy.

The goal was to enable it to take advantage of the plurality of payment use cases available on the market, through both proprietary and Partner channels.
To support the Customer’s goal, e*finance consulting Reply ha:

• identified possible areas for improvement of the “AS IS” solution, starting from a benchmark of the main national and international solutions
• identified and prioritised the new features to be integrated in order to optimise the existing solution
• identified and supported the adoption of innovative payment solutions, from proprietary NFC solutions (HCE, Host Card Emulation) to payment services offered by leading manufacturers on the market (Apple and Samsung)

RESULTS

The Customer successfully launched new payment services on the market, on an ongoing basis, thus enriching its offer portfolio available to customers (consumers and other partner financial institutions).