Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes

The Euro Alliance of Payment Schemes s.c.r.l. ( EAPS ) was established on 7 November 2007 as a merger of six European debit card payment systems.

Objective

The Brussels-based company is to enable pan-European card transactions under a newly created payment system and thus bring more competition in the European market.

Cardholders have the opportunity to use their payment cards to more acceptance points across Europe, ie Card user can then Europe stand out at any ATM cash and pay in cash transactions by card.

Traders and companies to benefit from a wider and better acceptance of card payments under a common logo of the EAPS.

For banks offer, by this additional, alternative pan-European efficiency improvements and more business policy options. 2007, the first pilot projects are carried out, a full-scale implementation in the EU countries of the partners is planned from 1 January 2008.

The objectives of EAPS are consistent with the requirements of the European Central Bank and the European Commission for the creation of a third European card payment procedure in the context of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

Founding Partner

The establishment of EAPS were in November 2007:

  • COGEBAN for the systems PagoBancomat and ATMs (Italy )
  • EPCS European Payment Card Solution GmbH for electronic cash systems and German ATM system ( Germany )
  • EUFISERV SCRL, a pan-European ATM system ( based in Brussels )
  • EURO 6000 S. A., card payment (Spain )
  • LINK Interchange Network Ltd. , ATM system ( United Kingdom )
  • Sociedade de Servicos Interbancaria S. A. ( SIBS ), for the MultiBanco system (Portugal )

The founding partners listed in November 2007, about 222 million issued payment cards, 2.1 million point-of -sale terminals and 189,000 ATMs in their systems.

The EAPS is open to other partners according to their own information. Each payment system that is committed to fulfill the requirements of the SEPA Cards Framework of the European Payments Council (EPC ), is invited to participate. In future also wants to enable the participation of individual banks EAPS. This should be developed as issuers and acquirers Institute for European banks new business opportunities.

History

Since 2001, the European Commission is working to unify the non-cash payments in the euro zone. With SEPA, a single euro payments area will be created without differences between national and cross -border payments.

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