An initiative from Poland’s six largest banks to enable mobile payments between bank customers went live today, according to a representative of Polish bank mBank.
Called Blik, the initiative was announced in 2014. The participating banks are Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Bank Zachodni WBK, mBank, ING Bank and PKO Bank Polski. These banks combined to create the Polish Payment Standard (PSP) and were granted permission for the enterprise by the National Bank of Poland last November.
Customers of these banks can use their phones to make payments in stores and online, withdraw cash from ATMs at all the participating banks, and send P2P payments to customers of any of the six banks. This is expected to cover more than 60% of Poland’s banking customers.
Other banks that participate in the Polish market have also signed letters of intent to join the service, including Eurobank, BNP Paribas Bank Polska, Credit Agricole, Getin Bank, Idea Bank, Dotpay, CashBill and ITCard.
This would seem to indicate that the service is, or will soon be, fairly universal in the country, and for a bank in Poland to not take part in it would put that bank at a competitive disadvantage.
Learn about mobile payments at Bank Innovation 2015 on March 2-3 in Seattle. Request your invitation here.