EBA CLEARING announces winners of the R2P ideation contest

EBA CLEARING hosted an online event today in which seven contestants from its R2P and RT1 user community, as well as their technical service providers, pitched their ideas for innovative request to pay end-user solutions. The contest was aimed at sparking inspiration on how to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the new SEPA Request-to-Pay Scheme of the European Payments Council and EBA CLEARING’s R2P infrastructure service for request to pay messages.

The event spotlighted explanatory videos with ideas from Erste Group Bank, ACI Worldwide, FIS, Fundu Technology Oy, PPI AG, PRETA and SIA. Around 200 participants attended the session and were able to vote for winners in three categories.

In the category “The Biggest Problem-Solver,” the winning ideas was “R2P and Smart Cities: The perfect fit for a frictionless journey” by SIA. The idea combines the flexibility and security of request to pay with the unique user experience of the Smart City: it sets forth a single app that is able to geolocate and lead travelers to activities and best deals and reward them with cashbacks. The creation of such an intelligent ecosystem where the payment experience is fulfilling and frictionless and which provides immediate benefits to consumers could help travelers save time, money and stress while being on a city trip.

Erste Group Bank took first place in the category “The Easiest to Implement” with its idea “Spot on (Payment on the spot)”. “Spot on” is conceived as a payment alternative to card and cash payments at the point of sale (POS), where it could be integrated as a new feature in the POS terminal or used in an app-to-app set-up. The solution idea brings together request to pay and instant payments in a ‘pay now’ scenario and could be particularly attractive for micro-enterprises selling to consumers.

In the category “The Most Creative”, ACI Worldwide received the most votes for its idea “Making Tax Less Taxing.” The idea describes government-to-citizen service opportunities leveraging existing payment rails and the R2P messaging infrastructure for the secure and highly performant transmission of private tax-related data. Value-added services in this space could include e-returns with digital signing and authentication or downloading historical returns.

All seven videos shown during the R2P ideation contest are available on the following R2P video page: https://reachmaps.ebaclearing.eu/?page_id=1821