equensWorldline SE, a subsidiary of Worldline and European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, and the European Payment Council (EPC) which manages the SEPA Proxy Lookup (SPL) scheme are extending their partnership to provide the central SPL service that supports the interoperability between existing European mobile Person-to-Person (P2P) payment services.  

The SPL service has been introduced in 2019 to improve the user experience for Person-to-Person money transfers across Europe. Customers can use their mobile device to transfer money from their payment account to another individual's account across Europe without manually exchanging payment information, such as IBAN.

This service supports the interoperability between the different existing domestic mobile payment schemes and provides the option to retrieve the necessary payment details like IBAN and beneficiary name, by using well-known aliases like a mobile phone number. Besides the pure P2P payments functionality, this SPL scheme and service could also be complementary to a request to pay (RTP) functionality or to other payment use cases or schemes.

Extended functionality

Since its launch the SPL scheme has received several new functionalities like the new alias type ‘e-mail address’. Furthermore, it offers now the possibility to check if an alias exists in the current proxy network. This feature plays an important role during the onboarding process for new customers to show which of their existing personal contacts are also participating in the same payment network.

Both extensions will improve the user experience and will extend the customer reach of the existing domestic or closed-loop P2P schemes. In addition to basic P2P payments, it can also be used for more advanced features like Person-to-Professional (P2Pro) payments and bill splitting functionalities that are provided by the mobile payment applications.

European payment initiatives

The SPL service became a central component for the success of any P2P payments which are the backbone for the usage of every new payment scheme. So it is not surprising that all new European initiatives refer to the proxy lookup as one of their potential components.

For P2P and P2Pro payments the SPL service can be used to retrieve the necessary payment details and in the case of RTP it may be used to identify the consumer (payer) and his/her IBAN as the recipient of the generated payment request.

Michael Steinbach, CEO equensWorldline SE, emphasises the importance of such a proxy service for the European payment landscape. “With the usage of such a central proxy lookup service, the user experience and security of person-to-person payments  significantly improves. Furthermore, it will strongly support the usage of request-to-pay messages to improve the conversion rate for beneficiaries.”

According to Etienne Goosse, Director General of the EPC, harmonisation, competition and innovation in Europe are key to develop a dynamic pan-European payment ecosystem. “The EPC has established the SPL scheme to facilitate European cross-border P2P payments. In this process, equensWorldline has been a reliable and innovative partner during the service implementation and participated actively in the continuous improvement of the service.”