 Good. So it's 9.50. Welcome back, everyone. We are ready with the next part of today's conference. The next session is a panel discussion entitled Realizing Pan-European Payment Solutions. I'm delighted to welcome the panel and the moderator, Fiona van Israel-Paul, Deputy Director General at the ECB. Fiona, I give the floor to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Aline, and good morning everybody. It's a beautiful sunny morning here in Frankfurt. I hope the same is true for the rest of the audience who are joining us here today. It's a very interesting moment in time to be sitting here discussing retail payments. There's a lot going on in this space, and now perhaps more than ever. We see instant payments becoming widely available to all citizens and businesses across Europe. We see more and more of the tech companies are rolling out their different types of payment solutions. We have the Apple pays, Google pays of this world and more. Also, third-party providers are using the PSD2's access to payment accounts, and payment processors are becoming centerpiece in the mergers and acquisitions business. Also, the banking industry is having to adjust in a more structural way to the developments that are taking place. In addition, we have the much-talked-about initiative Libre and Stablecoin arrangement that comes with it. Last but not least, central banks themselves are also studying the merits of a central bank digital currency. It's not just the technical solutions that we're seeing more and more, and more evolution there, but also payment behavior is changing. There's a shift to cashless payments at the physical point of sale and a shift to online shopping, and therefore to online payments. Both these trends have been amplified due to the current COVID pandemic. And this new behavior, of course, comes with new challenges and perhaps not all consumers can keep pace with these developments, and this is something we have to be very mindful of as well. In a period of change and uncertainty, it's difficult often to take long-term decisions, for example, investment decisions, also for providers of payment services. Nevertheless, it's of strategic importance to maintain or reclaim ownership of European payments as ownership is the best guarantee of being able to adjust our payments to meet the requirements of European stakeholders. So in today's panel, we will discuss how we can achieve one, or maybe even more, European payment solutions at the point of interaction. And I'm very pleased to be joined in this panel, first by Monique Goyens, Director General of the European Consumer Organization. Good morning, Monique. Agil Grappinay, President of the European Digital Payments Industry Alliance and CEO of Worldline. Dimitri Padtyatayn, a colleague of mine here in the ECB's Market Infrastructure and Payments Department, and also Deputy Director General in this DG. Javier Santamaria, Chairman of the European Payments Council, the EPC, and last but by no means least, Joachim Schmelz, Executive Board Member of the German Savings Bank and Juro Association and part of the European Payments Initiative, EPI, that we will probably be hearing more about during the discussion. So, let me start. I think we are running some questions on screen as well, and we will take up the answers that we find there in parallel. So, we will start maybe first with a question to you, Javier. Why has it proven so difficult to roll out pan-European payment solutions or brands at the point of interaction? Okay, good morning, Joana, thank you very much for inviting the European Payments Council to this event, which is not only interesting, but I would say also truly timely. So, to talk about pan-European solutions, of course, there are pan-European solutions for several cases and purposes, but I get that you refer to a fully-fledged, old-purpose, European-grown, pan-European solution for use at POI. And yes, there is surprisingly, not surprisingly, sorry, there is not yet such a solution, which shouldn't come as a surprise because Rome was not built in one day. If it is built in one day, then it is not Rome. So, I think we have to assume that as well, when there is a great claim, you need great evidence, when there is a great feat to be achieved, probably you will need to overcome great difficulties. So, let us focus on the details. We are talking about innovation. We are talking about payments. On the one hand, payments are bound to proximity. Therefore, against the aspect of this pan-European angle, they are subsidiary to underline economic transactions and therefore tend to adapt to specialized use cases against the old-purpose aspect as well. And they thrive on simplicity. So, also against the complexity that comes with old-purpose solutions. So, it is not obvious that such a pan-European solution should be easy to achieve. On the other hand, we are talking about innovation. Innovation usually takes smaller steps, not huge ones. Mr. Panetta referred to radical innovation. Usually radical innovation is the result of the accumulation of smaller progressive innovations. So, it focuses on niches, on specific use cases, concrete situations with no good solution at hand. So, that is why, before a fully-fledged solution is rolled out, we need to have in place what I would say more elementary building blocks as previous stages. And there is where we stand now. We have developed pan-European payments coming from national ones. We have developed real-time payments coming from a batch processing world. We are developing a quest to pay a scheme coming from a one-way guided payments world. With these building blocks, as primary outcome of innovation, you can now think of a fully-fledged old-purpose pan-European and European-grown solution. So, I think this was needed before we can think about that. And furthermore, and here I will end, the appearance of such a solution should not be expected to happen easily, given that payments worked in the old world pretty much not the most needed innovation to be deployed. It is the future demand. We think of that stemming from a mature, single market. What we think about a payment solution to match that future demand. So, we are anticipating the future. I sympathize with what Mrs. McInnes was saying, that it is not that we can rest quiet and calm. We need to anticipate the future. And for that, well, yes, it is true. It is not easy. It is demanding. It is tough, but I think that is what we should do. Work hard to overcome difficulties to get to that mature, single market. Thank you very much, Avié. Gilles, if I could ask you the same question from your vantage point, what would you see as the reasons why we haven't managed to achieve such a solution so far? And maybe you also see we have the building blocks there at the moment as well. Yeah, for sure. Good morning, Fiona. And many thanks to the ECB for this invitation and good morning to all. I'm really very glad. Indeed, as Javier said, this is a very timely event and a very, very important topic for us all. And so maybe I would start, Fiona, but I think that let's not be too tough with ourselves here. I'm talking from an industry standpoint, an industry player standpoint. Europe has been quite innovative when it came as a matter of fact to create an European payment means and to be innovative. If I compare with the rest of the world, I believe that we stand ahead of in many domains, of course, historically in car payment is the very early adoption of EMV, chip and PIN, which is still something that you don't find in all continents by far, including as we know the US with open banking, instant payment and CIPA in general for account payment. I mean, we've been creating pan-European payment solutions. The point is that indeed we did not succeed in creating a powerful pan-European retail payment brand. Something that is actually making a difference at the point of development and we realize still today, as we know, for our intra-European payment on foreign brands, which is of course coming with a cost and a dependency. Your question was why. I would say there are two dimensions. Why and if these reasons changed today to be successful as Ravier was mentioning, it is demanding. Why? I believe there are multiple answers and I don't want to be too long here. The question of our European payment ecosystem with thousands of banks, no pan-European acquirers underdeveloped for decades international retail that was not expressing a very strong need and to a certain extent the lack of perception of a real need in front of a challenging business case at the time may have explained why in the end we tried money, CIPA for garden not try very hard at the time. There was also probably a different perception of the geo-strategic context. We thought maybe that friends were friends forever and that the balance of the world was what it was during the Cold War. I believe many of these reasons have changed as a matter of fact. The consolidation of the payment market, at least the industry players create now scalable players that can support like we can do ourselves pan-European initiative in a much more efficient manner and deploy much faster things that would have taken years probably also the perception of the market need is very different. They are powerful e-commerce players that need a simple solution to operate on the cross-border basis. Merchants have grown international franchise with thousands of shops across Europe they would take advantage of powerful pan-European retail payment brand for sure and I believe that our perception of the geo- strategy context has changed too over the recent past and there was an ambiguous situation with Visa Europe we were not exactly knowing if it was more Visa or more Europe now we know it has been sold things are clear today and I believe that there also our perception that relying exclusively on non-European payment brands to make our own currency circulating at point of sales and on websites is certainly probably today something we don't feel really comfortable with due to the evolution of the geo- strategy context. For me all these reasons explain why we are probably much more ready today than before to tackle very seriously the topic of today for this conference. Okay thank you very much for that Jill and very good to hear that we are in a better place now than maybe some years ago to tackle the challenges that lie ahead in the meantime Alina I think we have the results of the poll I don't know whether you can show these on screen yeah so the results are showing on the right hand side so on the we don't have a lot of people voting so everyone out there get ready for the next question but on the first question the need for a pan-European payment solution we have a yes that's good and on the second question can we show the second question please so on the second question we have the majority saying so that's the when will it happen so people are saying in two years or in after five or later so we have these two winning okay thank you for that and maybe I would ask our panelists what they think of the responses they're monique maybe I start with you especially coming from the consumer side are you surprised not really because maybe the word pan-European payment solution is a little bit a verbal concept that is not necessarily talking speaking to the public in general but first of all let me say very happy to be part of this conversation and representing the consumer perspective I would also like to give a little bit of an optimistic perspective because the title is realizing a pan-European solution for payments but we already have two pan-European solutions which are credit transfers and direct debit of course you cannot pay with that in shops except in Germany there you need cards and cash and of course we know that banks are for the moment really trying to dispatch the use of cash and I'm very happy to have heard Mrs. Nagina say that the maintenance of cash is key for social inclusion and when it comes to cards except if those cards are national for the moment part of an American scheme as has been just said by Gilles you cannot really make cross-border payments and what I would like to say there is that we know that ECB has been really trying very hard over the last years to get a pan-European card scheme available and we are very happy that now this is moving and what I would like to say because I heard about the colleagues say that it's difficult but I would like to say this is not a 21st century revolution I'm old enough to have had a European credit card in the 1980s it was called Eurocard it existed and it was sourced to Mastercard so that was a private decision by the banking system to get away from that and of course we need to go towards pan-European payment solutions with a lot of different solutions available and in the pipeline we are very happy about this competitive development of consumers thank you very much Monique maybe Joachim if I could ask you are you surprised or do you think the results of the poll are as you would have expected maybe we skip Joachim for now we are having some problems connecting him then I move on to Dimitri what would you think? first of all thank you for having me today Fiona I think this the reserves that we have seen reflect an increasing alignment of the planets in terms of a desire for pan-European solutions to materialize I mean when I saw the questions I did myself my own predictions and I had put 80% yes so I see I don't have the figures now but I see that it's even more it's kind of 90% yes and my bet was a critical mass around two years now I see that it's more split between maybe five years or more and it's I believe just highlighting the complexity of the undertaking and the other question is this achievable and I'm now thinking of my predictions of two years well hopefully yes but it's quite a challenge basically maybe the reassuring parts is that we see many parts of the puzzle moving and actually moving in the right direction we have the city in scheme maybe the adoption is not as it should be but it's there we will soon I think Javier was mentioning the request to pay the scheme for request to pay which is coming we have I heard Fabio Panetta earlier referring earlier to the reachability measures adopted by the ECB Governing Council quite during summer and I will come back to that later and also I would say growing prospects of having at least one European solution at the point of interaction becoming a reality in the near future so I would want to make a short analogy with cycling and as everyone knows cycling is an individual sports conducted with teams and the point here is that you can be as strong as you like the best chances to grow decently is while you are part of the team and maybe this is what we were missing a bit in Europe so there was probably not enough sensing of belonging to a team and I believe this is what we try to do here today in the conference but more generally for the moment in Europe is to kind of build this Europe for retail payments team basically and to make it a winning team so the point is that in a winning team there is no hiding so everyone that belongs to the team contributes and what I can do here and I'm just maybe even reusing some words that I heard from Fabio Panetta earlier I mean I can only reiterate that from the ECB perspective and from the Euro system perspective in general we are committed to contribute with what we can bring basically and one of the action is to be quite forceful in terms of acting as a catalyst and I think we are quite active in that respect so while the figures are I don't believe they are surprising the figures are what everyone would expect at this stage but I will conclude with that between answering to a question and having this materializing there is still a distance and we need to pitch it okay thank you very much Dimitri and a very nice idea of this being a team sport I think this is a very good analogy here we still don't have Joachim Schmaltz I think Aline is that correct no Joachim Schmaltz is still we are trying to connect him in a different way okay it's problem solved soon perfect okay but then maybe we continue and maybe I would continue then with a question to you Javier the European Payments Council the EPC has developed the European Scheme based on payments that we all know very well SCT INST how do you see its current uptake and what is on the horizon for the coming years I think you have to unmute yourself yeah okay yeah but I have done it well looking to the glass I would say that I am more closer to seeing it as half full rather than half empty so I am optimistic and positive I don't have the figures for the third quarter of this year so I must refer to the second quarter then 6.5% of all credit transfers were instant credit transfers so to me that means that we are beyond the critical mass if we understand critical mass as that which signals the point in which a process is felt sustainable so there is no way back to me we are there there is no way back the SCT INST will stay there in the future this traffic comes from more than 2200 PSPs in Europe meaning 56% of all PSPs in Europe and two thirds of PSPs in the Euro area so it is still growing it does not grow continuously it goes step by step but I am optimistic I am positive it is present in 22 countries so a majority of countries in the SEPA area if we talk about performance 99% of all transactions are finalized in less than 5 seconds and I would say well below that threshold of 5 seconds if we remember the original idea it was 10 seconds or the first time the idea was to secure transactions were processed in less than 10 seconds we are well below 5 seconds that is good we have raised the amount the limit amount or the amount limit to 100,000 euros in July without any incident and this was done during the tough times of the crisis and if we look also into the time span around one third of transactions take place outside the daytime so really adjusting to the needs of the users because it is not only the real time factor it is also the 24 hours 7 days a week feature that we have to bear in mind these figures mean that we have built a solid foundations to what is to come in the future we are working hard on preparing the launch of this scheme the request to pay which I think will also complement the asset inst also it is not exclusively intended to instant payments but probably it will make use of instant payments instant payments heavily and we hope to launch the scheme next month in November so that the market is ready to make it effective along 2021 I think this is for the time being where we can say of what the EPC is working on really and really I think positive in this today we are working on hard on making that possible by November we will be able to release the first version of the RTP bearing in mind that we are also preparing a second version for the next year November 2021 okay thank you very much for that Havier so it is very promising what you say the take up of instant payments is definitely increasing quite a bit and we are very close then to the go live for the first of request to pay Monique may be moving to the consumer side and consumers are very much in the minds of everybody we heard from Merade McGuinness too that the consumer was foremost in the minds of the commission when they were coming up with their retail payment strategy so for yourself the European consumer organization this has been a staunch defender of consumer rights and consumer choice how will instant payments be beneficial to consumers well indeed freedom of choice is one of our fundamental values as long as the choice is not manipulated and in the context of digitalization of finance a choice can be manipulated and we all need to be very very concerned about that and have a monitor what's happening there but of course for us the introduction of instant payment solutions is a competitive element of a market that has been highly dominated by not enough payment solution so we welcome that very much maybe just a few points that I would like to make there but first of all we really should consider instant payments to become the new normal meaning it's not a premium service and meaning that the banks should resist the temptation to charge fees that are not in proportion with the service that is going to become the normal service we know that there is a lot of work going on in the context of ERPB on this instant payments at the point of introduction where it will be soon possible to pay my instant payments in shops I have for example a QR code and so this is really a very very interesting development what we are a little bit concerned about is the fact that there will be if we understand correctly a single scheme for cards and for instant payments that would be managed by the banks so we believe that that might be a risk of killing competition because if it's just the banks or a certain amount of banks that have the monopoly of managing two schemes that might be something that might hinder competition and might really need to be monitored and the last point I would like to make instant payments is one element of competition that could be another way forward which is direct debit like it has is being done for the moment in Germany already where retailers and customers have the choice at the point of sale in the shop to have an electronic direct debit instead of a card payment and what we see is that Germany and this is also confirmed in the Commission report on industries in Germany there is the lowest rate of service so it can be linked to the fact that there is a competition between the cards and the instant payment and the direct debit solution meaning that well it's a very good demonstration that competition gets prices down at least for the merchants not sure whether it triggers down to the customer at the end of the day but still it's a very good element of competition okay thank you for that Monique and pleased to see that in the meantime Joachim Schmelz has joined us Joachim you're very welcome I don't know whether you want to add something at this point yourself because I don't know whether you had the chance to hear the results of the poll surveys unfortunately not at all sorry for that no problem I have to give some few about this thinking about what is necessary about the competition that's here I think we have already a monopoly situation coming from the ICS sorry I have the staff link I'm still not happy about this we have we have a oligopoly situation because the ICS are the only one of the European scheme there because the national banks still have a European scheme so the only way to have a poor European scheme owned by Europeans would be that the banks can increase their possibilities to have a technology solution for them and I think we have a strong position on instant payment but if we don't earn money on instant payment and we have business models of instant payment there's no more need for investment and no money for investment and on the other side the ICS who has this oligopoly situation for pan-European payment system they have get all the money can increase the fees for merchants can invest more for innovation products also for marketing also for spending also for buying other national card schemes so you have the choice whether you want to have banks building payment systems then you have to give them room for investments you have to give them room for earnings or you will stay for the international card schemes as the only one as the oligopoly and then we all know what happens if an oligopoly gets okay thank you for sharing these thoughts with us Joachim and indeed you raised some important points in this respect Aline can I just check, do we have questions at this stage from the audience? No, not yet. Okay. But then maybe I move on to Dimitri the ECB itself of course has also its own offering for instant payments and has as well taken measures to support full pan-European reach for banks and for clearing houses how do you see the developments and can the ECB do more to facilitate pan-European reach of instant payments? Thank you Fiona indeed you are now obviously referring to the two measures measure one and measure two that are now famous I believe that the current concept took during summer where those two measures are called eachability measures so the point is that the government council had to step in because despite all efforts and I don't want to draw a too negative landscape but still despite all the efforts made to promote instant payments the prospects of achieving full reachability across Europe were not there and the root cause for that is on one hand the multiplicity of automated clearing houses often anchored locally and combined with a situation where there is no convenient interoperability between those ECBs and this is actually from the reachability perspective preventing the pan-European reach to materialize and of course to solve these issues the euro system has been investigating again what can we do and you made reference to the tips infrastructure and we've been assessing what options to support better the pan-European reachability and we have come with those two measures so what are they the first measure called M1 is actually that all PSPs that have adhered to the in-skin and that are reachable in target 2 must also become reachable in tips either as a participant in tips or just as a reachable party that's the measure 1 and the measure 2 is more on the side of the ACHS and consists of requesting that the ACHS that are offering instant payment solutions instant payment services migrate their accounts from target 2 to tips and while it makes the combination of those two measures it makes that it creates a space where PSPs can decide when they can decide to be either participant in tips or just reachable party they can decide to be a member of one or several ACHS as they wish basically but there will be there will now be the guarantee that any payment that is involving another PSP somewhere in Europe potentially with two ACHS in the loop will successfully be executed instantly and actually independently of the choices made by the other PSP and well maybe to be more precise I mean I should not speak about the guarantee of successfully being executed but at least if it does not succeed it will not be on the grounds of reachability problems so these measures were discussed intensively internally within the your system but also I insist with market participants and ACHS we had several workshops and discussions to come up with those proposals so it's not kind of an autocratic decision from the current council the point is that the current council is the one capable of making that decision so we believe indeed that this is quite a major contribution to towards making instant payments the new norm in Europe maybe other benefits because we talk a lot about reachability but another two other benefits I would say is one and I think have here mentioned that already these measures will actually make that the current limitations that we have coming from the opening hours of target two in terms of funding and defending will be removed meaning that as soon as the funding is present in tips it can be moved to any of the accounts that the PSP has with an ACH and the other element the drawback of fragmented liquidity pots as we call them will also be to a large extent mitigated so it's reachability but also probably improvement in terms of liquidity management now moving on to the implementation when we did already doing some of the governance concept took the decision to implement those two measures and our purpose or objective is actually to complete the rollout of that by the end of next year so that's why I replied somewhere two years in the first question the first measure so that the fact that PSPs should become reachable in tips I mean the PSPs can proceed as they like at the pace they want according to their implementation pattern it can be done today, it can be done whenever they like the tips is ready for that and the point is that the NCB the National Central Bank will also be supporting and monitoring the adoption or the readiness of their own communities from regarding the second measure so that the ACH is moving from target to tips while the software must be adapted and we have started already the adaptations and I must say we have already started also a dialogue with industry to provide the technical details for instance on the new messaging flows we have had workshops a few weeks ago and we also want to initiate a debate or discussion on how to precisely organize the migration from target to tips especially for the ACHs the team told me recently that we plan to have a workshop somewhere mid of November so again we believe this is quite important as a step towards it's only one element but it's an important one for Pan-European instant payments and let me finish maybe with one word on the work that we do currently with the Swedish Shantan Bank I suspect most of you know that the risk bank has decided to also use tips for instance in Sweden and this as of May 2022 and actually this is also an interesting development because it allows us, well together with the colleagues from Sweden to investigate designs whereby first currency instant payment would become possible at this stage there is no commitments but there are investigations going on so to your question Fiona can we do more maybe maybe we can do more but I think we do a lot already thank you very much Dimitri and from your discussions let's say with the market and in these workshops there's a willingness to go forward you feel it so yes indeed what we presented was we actually did an open dialogue and in the workshop at least themselves came with some proposals and that's how we ended up finally with those two measures it was I believe of course there is always a certain degree of feel when things change that's normal but there was I believe quite a broad consensus on the relevance of those two measures yes very good to hear on the central banking side with the solutions that Dimitri just mentioned and maybe moving to yourself Gilles the European digital payments industry alliance this was recently created to join forces between acquirers and processors of digital payments and yourself of course as president of this association how do you see your role in driving forward a pan-European payment solution or even solutions as you just said EDPR was created initially by Ingenico, Nets, Nexi and the world line and is now having more and more new joiners like SIA recently from Italy and we represent the largest payment services providers acquirers are indeed financial industrial processors for supporting banks in issuing and dealing with their payment needs so we have designed this association with a very clear objective in mind which is first to gather genuinely European companies I just mean it one sec which is only companies having their headquarters their real decision centers in Europe their R&D centers and most of their business interests are linked with the future of digital payments in Europe and on purpose we have excluded from membership European subsidiaries of larger non-European groups to make sure we really voice the concern of genuine industry players of the European payment ecosystem and why so because our broader objective is really to support the EU objective to create a digital single market fueled by digital payments the purpose and it is part of our mandate of EDPR is to contribute to the EU policy debate that will define the future of the business environment for digital payments and when I was hearing Fabio Panetta and Commissioner Magnes sharing with us their agenda for the future of digital payment these days this is somehow directly the working agenda of EDPR in the coming years if we are of course invited to participate and contribute to all these key initiatives and we made very clear that we are absolutely ready to participate into any relevant European governance bodies for payment topics to contribute and bring our experts and give our honest views in particular as large acquirers on any success factors we would believe would impact the chance of success of such initiative like by European payment solutions and particularly participate into regulatory debates or any market led by European initiative like EPI of course in particular regarding how we can contribute to make it successful this is really something we believe was needed after years of consolidation we have created these large independent companies that are no longer strictly speaking belonging to the banks payment assets have been transferred to us but we need to replace somehow the voice of the banks in that context or complement the voice of the bank and of course the other payment stakeholders the consumers and the merchant organization to make sure we can really contribute to aligning interest and having a vivid debate to make sure we adopt soon and fast and efficiently the best payment option so this is really the mandate of EPTIA. Thank you and it's indeed as you say very much aligned with the retail payment strategy of the commission when it comes to European strategic autonomy and also with that of the ECB and the Euro system with our retail payment strategy that was announced in November last year. Joachim moving on to you the German savings banks they have millions of customers as we all know and the savings bank play a major role in German and European payments in July 2020 you announced to be one of the 16 founding members of the new European payments initiative EPI. What are your expectations for EPI and as EPI what do you plan to bring European investors? Well we our expectation is rather simple we think retail payment solutions in Europe have no outkeep pace with the needs of the consumer and the merchants. We have a patchwork of domestic national solutions with little or no cross-border acceptance. This has resulted in dependency on the national card schemes and we have no real choice for consumers so we have to consolidate and even in Germany the savings banks have a market share of 50% it's not big enough to compete with the volumes and the efficiency of the pick-up players in the world so we have to consolidate in Europe all together and the banks are very happily enforcing and looking together how they can find the right solution for each of their markets the markets are different it's complex, the consumer needs are different between French and German between Belgium, Netherlands and Spain and you have to combine them and to find the right solution with cost efficiency on the side of the infrastructure but also on a customer experience side for each of the individual wishes of the consumers in the markets and we're making progress we just invented the company which was founded yesterday we had the first sport meeting of the new company we invited new banks they're already someone knocking on the door to come to round of 16 to get together we have a small period until the end of this year for other participants to come to our ETI infrastructure solution the first proof of concept next year and we think that we get the full roll out of the project until 2024 okay, very good so things are really happening now indeed with the setup of the new company I think this is very important and it's really becoming very concrete good to hear, thank you maybe another question perhaps to yourself Dimitri what do you think, we hear a lot about the big tech firms has Europe lost the competition to global big tech when it comes to digital payments or would you say that the right elements are in place now for a successful roll out of pan-European payment solutions at the point of interaction using again an analogy, I believe the match is ongoing so nothing is lost at this stage we may have reached the half time with a score that is not necessarily the one we would want basically we may be lagging a bit behind but we still need to play the second half and then good teams can react so what we define, what we try to do now is defining the tactics for the second half now this being said and I think Joachim was hinting to that we are still confronted with an excessive fragmentation across Europe and with many local schemes that actually do not have the potential of ever becoming pan-European and we need to be mindful of that while this element of fragmentation combined with a never faster digitalization of the society and also with the presence of big techs and quite agile global actors is actually raising some policy concerns I will not repeat what I heard from Fabio Panetta earlier today it is creating some policy concerns in terms of competitiveness and independence of the European retail payment system as a whole but also in terms of security in terms of operational resilience and those characteristics are quite important when it comes to delivering state of the art payment services tailor made for Europe basically and for this reason as updated it is a retail payment strategy and maybe contrary to what we did for the European reachability where we really acted as operator or platform here we are actually more in a role of catalyst and beyond the other objectives of usability and sustainability of what we implement a key element in our strategy is to foster as you have understood already the development of pan-European solutions that are meeting five criteria and I feel sorry for those who were there when Fabio Panetta was speaking because it's the very same criteria so the first one is pan-European reach and seamless experience and that means the ability to make payments at the point of interactions which is under the same conditions in a consistent manner across the EU so that's the first criteria the second criteria is convenience and low cost here we are touching on criteria like ease of use user friendliness ability to initiate payments using different tools from the payment cards from mobile phones the third criteria is safety and security obviously we talk here about compliance with the relevant legal regulatory oversight frameworks and requirements we talk about strong user authentication we talk about user protection or consumer protection and the fourth criteria is the point of and I think it's a very important one given the geopolitics now it's the idea of a European brand and governance I think we've been talking about that many times already this morning and then comes the last one which is global acceptance meaning beyond the EU for people traveling it so that's why in our world as catalysts we are ready to support any solution that would comply with those five criteria I mean we've heard Joachim and speaking about the European payments initiative so the EPI at this stage this initiative looks quite promising and we see we just heard that there is either time schedule already in place but of course we are ready to hear if there are other solutions that are also compliant with those five criteria of course we would be supportive and we believe that when we do this we have the ability to develop pan-European solutions like EPI or any other then we can compete seriously with global cost schemes and big things so that's a bit of action I would say acting as a catalyst and maybe to conclude the future will be what we make out of it basically and to answer the question did we lose something no the match is not over but it's great time that we played the second half well thank you very much Dimitri very clear I see that we have quite a few questions coming in from the audience now but maybe before we take those Jill I would ask you from your perspective would you see it the same as Dimitri when it comes to the competition versus Big Tech Yes, Big Tech and other payment brands more largely because of course my answer as a businessman and also as representing the association is definitely not at all we cannot have lost the battle that we did not really deliver so far because I only believe that money was a serious attempt to tackle this issue 10 years back but I think we must look at the reality without complacency we let the void in our payment architecture with the absence of a powerful pan-European retail payment brand for circa 15 years since we launched the euro and as we all know nature hates void so numerous power brands have been launched in between other have been growing very fast and as it was said previously by Joachim some of these are supported by some of the wealthiest companies in the humankind history so it won't be a walk in the park to come in this supported place supported by people having muscles and brains and ultra powerful B2C brands so I would add to that that if we decide really to move forward some significant pan-European payment solution as collective initiative failure is hardly an option for us all because we cannot invest on everything in parallel and if we invest massively on this new pan-European payment solution then most probably I believe we will stop investing on the existing local domestic brand whatever we may think of their limits there have been the only remaining barrier that we were having against absolute foreign dominance on our payment ecosystem so if we don't succeed in the new initiative while we would be weakening the domestic scheme it would be a total loss on both fronts it would be like cleaning the table for foreign brands I believe it is a very serious stake which drive me to thinking that whatever we do whether it is API or tomorrow other pan-European payment solution that would be initiated I see three major key success conditions if we want really to win the battle the first one is having an inclusive governance from the start not only banks but really old stakeholders strongly associated from the start to make sure that we build together a real business value proposition for the merchants, for the payers with innovative features and indeed a competitive cost for all and of course a positive business case Joachim was mentioning it for the issuing banks it is no different for the large acquirers equipping millions of point of sales zillions of internet payment pages onboarding on payment apps of merchants a new payment brand is anything but a low investment for acquirers the same way so we need to make sure that we have a payback for all and I believe we have the room to create something smart and that can at the same time be competitive and interesting for all stakeholders and the last comment here we've been mentioning and I was hearing from Fabio Panetta the comment that such initiative are also welcome from a sovereign standpoint this drive me to a comment that if I look at the big superpowers of the world the US have their payment brands for eons like master discoverer China as union pay Japan as GCB Russia as created mirror India as created rupee Europe is the only superpower that has not equipped itself with its own retail payment brand to secure its independence somehow this is also a public good and the public good I would not be shocked that it would be also sponsored by the public stakeholders the states the EU to help its economic business model because we don't work only for private interest here I understand we would not work for private interest it would also secure the European independence in the complex geostrategic environment so for me definitely I mean Dimitri was saying it has to be team Europe if we want to initiate these things because it is not a given because it is demanding it is a huge investment for all and we need to gather really a team where there would be the issuing banks of course but acquirers regulators and private and public stakeholders that would be for me the winning team okay thank you very clear thank you very much for that and Aline I don't see the questions myself do you want to read some of them out and we will see with our panelists who would like to take them yes definitely so we're having a lot coming in so sorry for the ones we're not going to be able to answer maybe Fitz with what Jill was just saying so also about money so the question is how can we ensure that instant payments at the point of sale are competitive with credit cards with some credit cards you have benefits whereas for instant payments do not foresee such mechanism that's one of them do you want me to read out more or maybe we take that one first I think in your hand you're looking this is something that is already on your plate to look at yes yes thank you very much and I saw the question before you and I hope that you would ask me to answer so I think first of all there is really a very fundamental point there which is there is not a regulatory living-staying field between credit cards and other means of payment indeed there is for credit cards you know the charge back there is protection for customers when something goes wrong that doesn't exist for instant payments so that is not really like a competitive advantage we should really create a regulatory framework that is harmonizing consumer rights across different payment solutions that would be a first element if that when that is being done then of course there can be some of the advantages that are being offered by some credit card companies like collecting points or insurance for travel or so but you have to put that really in your comparison and if you compare the fee that you pay for your credit card every year plus maybe additional cost with the price of instant payments maybe it would be really good for consumers to get away from the credit card and to really use the instant payment system but that needs to be done in a context where as a consumer you are protected in the same way and that is for the moment not yet the case and that might be something that we should be to put under to do this one so thank you Monique would anybody else like to remark on that particular question okay maybe not Eileen do you want to go with the next question yeah so I have another question here so somebody saying we heard a commission on McGwyneth say that the commission would take a legislative action on STC INST if required so it's not a question to the commission but it's the question to the panel so what timeline would you put on this at what point in time in the future do you think a decision would be required on legislative action so it's a market question thank you Havi would you like to say something to this from the EPC side and running the STC INST team yeah okay yeah well I would say simply that action should be taken once knowledge is achieved so really know the intricacies and the nuances of the situation so far we are just in terms of what we are analyzing STC INST vis-a-vis the separate regulation we are just measuring the ratio that are mentioned in that regulation so but we are not really understanding the market dynamics so first I would say we really need to know what is happening so and that I know will take place so in the very near future there will be some investigation taking place really trying to grasp why some PSPs are not adhering or what are the difficulties what are the costs how large is actually the reachability in place which is probably much larger than what can be deduced from the figures of PSPs adhering because size is not taken into account so I think first we need to really know what is happening and then afterwards act but not be too in a hurry to react thinking that regulation will solve what maybe it's not solvable through regulation so first I would say we need to understand the details and the intricacies of the market situation and then see if regulation is needed and probably even in that case regulation should be also very careful in addressing all specific aspects so it wouldn't be an easy piece of regulation okay thank you Aline you have more questions oh yes I have lots of questions so maybe one here on so what is the role do you think what role do you see for fintechs and open banking slash psd2 will play for the European payment solution so what is the role of fintechs and open banking for the European payment solution and here it goes on in this regard will request to pay scheme that is being introduced next month be an alternative payment solution based on open EPI or specified under the psd2 or will there be complimentary okay thank you Aline I don't know Joachim would you like to say something on this because of course you are there with the pan-European solution well on the EPI initiative we invited fintechs to help us to build the new system so it's now building the team of fintechs company together and we want to share it between people from the banks people from payment industry and also from fintechs and also including fintech companies to build the new system because we need to hurry up we have to have an agile working style to get real the fast track on this product so there is a lot of room for fintechs and we already get in contact with them to help us to build the system the other one is that the EPI is an open architecture so we are including the psps we are yesterday we made some decisions about the rules how the EPIs can be on board from in EPI start from the beginning and also for fintechs it's open that they can come to us including to the system because we want to have all the partners in Europe on board the role of them but what we always say it has to be the same rules for everybody who wants to contribute to the system has also to invest in the system and somehow the banks have the feelings that some fintechs want to have a free ride that they only want to have the free access to data to banks to have their own business development and the banks don't get the free access to their and so they have to be very aware that there should be a level playing field for both market participants okay thank you very much for that okay Aline maybe if you would I believe in the current situation we cannot afford not using the skills and the good ideas that are coming including fintechs and I believe they did ERPB so the European Board understood that there are discussions there is work being done there in order to be I heard many times the word inclusive we need to be inclusive and that's for me one of the the success factor in this in the taking absolutely Aline so me again Dr. Smals there's a lot of interest here in the EPI so we have another question potentially for you and so you EPI announced the proof of concept next year what type of payment instrument will it be somebody's asking is it card or QR code or what will it be thank you we will start with the P2P instrument because there's a lot of investment in the banks already there and they can link them all together so we have a pan-European P2P instrument this is for sure that we will do and then we work on the digital solution and also on the card payment it's already investigating which will be the next phase can we use part of the national schemes we have can we link them, can we build new can we use the standards for them and we have discussed this with the PSPs because it's very necessary here into the third party acquirers because the third party acquirers are very necessary part of the solution so there's a lot of discussion on the way and the first one is P2P okay thank you Alina I'm conscious also of the time we were running this panel until 11 o'clock you also wanted to ask a question to the audience too on the digital euro do you want to run that at the moment yes we can run that on the side thank you so everyone if you look on the right hand side of your screen you will see a poll question coming up now and it's open thank you so essentially asking whether a digital euro will support the rollout of digital payment solutions in Europe and just to have some thoughts on that and maybe while we're waiting for that I would take the opportunity to address the final question myself to all our panellists so the digital euro Fabia mentioned it as well also Mareit McGinnis on the 12th of October the ECB launched a public consultation on a digital euro how would you see a digital euro supporting the advancement of pan-European payments would somebody like to start on that Monique I'm sure that the other panellists have much more to say than us so I just give my two points here from a perspective we very much welcome this idea so to have a digital public currency which is a public good next to the cash we would just like to make two comments and this is of course we are at the beginning of our reflection but the two comments that we would like to make in this context is first of all this should not mean the end of physical cash it is very important to keep physical cash for many reasons that I will not develop here because we don't have the time but one very obvious reason is there must be physical cash and then the back of solution when technology breaks down we have all experienced with video calls that technology is not 100% reliable and that can be for short periods and for longer periods so cash must be still something that needs to be maintained and the second point that I would like to make is we are concerned and maybe there are already explanations to that but for the moment our question is how will this digital currency be distributed because we understand that it will be distributed via traditional banks where traditional banks at the moment really try to move away from cash I mean digital or not and so will there be disproportionate fees for digital for getting access to digital currency or not so the distribution aspect and the role of intermediaries in having for consumers access to digital currency is a very important point for us to be addressed in order to really find is an acceptable solution okay thank you very much Monique Gilles you wanted to come in of course we've been reading very carefully also the recent report that ECB has issued regarding what could be a digital euro and what should be the rule sorry you hear me? okay and so I was saying that of course there is just one comment I would like to do digital currencies or CBDC in general are at this stage still primarily a technical solution a technical solution which are still looking for the use case they want really to solve for the consumers the merchants and the wider payment ecosystem participants so I believe that we have not seen yet very well where could be the differentiating value proposition that would come with digital currencies in the context of retail payment at least and from that standpoint I think let's not be fooled by the enormous media impact of the crypto currencies these are not payment tools these days these are primarily speculative digital asset class that has been primarily used for this purpose of making speculation of particular nature so we are not yet having bridged the gap between the crypto technology or blockchain based technology and actual wide use cases that could bring a differentiated value proposition so I personally believe that Fabio was starting to allude very clearly to some use cases where the digital euro could bring something this is for me the first direction we should explore where do we see with such technology something that we could not easily achieve or that would be much more expensive to achieve with other technologies use case first and then we know we can manage the technology okay thank you please Fabio go ahead thank you just to compliment because I share very much the views expressed by Monique and by Gilles yes we have to bear in mind the actual demand we have to really respond to a market need that is crucial and I think that was mentioned by Mr. Panetta in his introductory words anything we do must serve citizens well and I'm quoting Mr. Panetta serve citizens well but I think and this I am also in sympathy with ECB I think the ECB is not in the report and the public consultation they are not or you are not announcing the issuing of a digital euro it's your announcing maybe an investigation we need to work on that to bring the debate from the academic stance to the laboratories and to the real world and the main message I think is that coming from the report is that the only thing we cannot afford is not to be ready so time will tell us when to issue and if issue a digital euro but what we need to do and we need to start getting ready is to be in a position so that when the need arises when there is a demand when there is a business case then we can implement the solution and not wait until the demand is already there to start thinking for a solution so I and in that sense I think this report comes in also very timely we need to get ready the only thing we cannot afford is not to be prepared exactly you know and I think this tallies very well with what Fabio was saying earlier too and I think with what Ulrich will say afterwards Dimitri do you want to add to this? Yes I mean I'm conscious that the digital euro is quite high as a topic in itself I just want and it's just flowing nicely I believe what Javier was just mentioning I will quote another quote of Fabio Panetta and he said we need to make sure that our currency is fit for the future and inaction is not an option and the point is that today we are actually providing euro in two forms banknotes available to the general public and then the central bank deposits that is actually with a limited access to banks and we see I mean as was mentioned earlier we see a decline in use of the banknotes and it just belongs to the good match of the situation indeed as Javier was mentioning to stand ready to implement a digital euro if the need arises basically and just to reassure Monique maybe the point is not to replace the banknotes it's actually a complementary mean except that it would be in a digital form that is complementing what we do with banknotes but I don't want to say too much about this I have the risk of emptying what the Ulrich Binzal wants to say in a minute indeed thank you Dimitri maybe I give the last word to Joachim on this topic in the world of EPI how do you feel about a possible digital euro and the role this can play to well it's a question how it's implemented and how it works and I think I fully agree with Phil we have to learn more about the stale places there is still now for a digital euro like in if you invested in blockchain ledger and security base somehow you have to come to a euro to there would be a digital euro very helpful on a wholesale basis but if you really need a digital euro on the retail payment side it's still open I think and this has to be investigated and has to try it and we have to use look for use cases but we have to be ready so I think it's very good that we invest that we look for it that we search that we make research and we look for use cases okay thank you and I see that Aline has joined us in the meantime on screen so you have the results of the poll just to conclude this panel yes we have if I speak here we go so it is a clear yes so will digital euro support the answer is yes of the audience okay thank you very much so I will conclude myself by thanking all the panelists for their great contributions to the discussion this morning to Joachim, Monique, Jil and Dimitri and I hand over to you Aline for the next part