De Volksbank is the fourth largest bank in the Netherlands and with this deal with equensWorldline, a leader in payments and transactions services, will be one of the first Dutch banks to offer instant payments. The contract between the two parties is initially for five years. Instant payments are supported by equensWorldline’s Instant Payments Back-Office service.
Last December, the bank announced that the Worldline subsidiary would be their partner for their instant payments Clearing & Settlement Mechanism. The back-office service used is part of a broader back-office product offering which can also deal with other payment types, such as multi-currency and high-value, and SEPA. It is also PSD2 and EPC compliant.
Terry Smit, payments and savings manager at de Volksbank, stated that the bank chose equensWorldline because they offer an expedited time to market, exceptional value for money, and have a proven track record of providing critical services. Moreover, “[n]ext to the simple and transparent price structure,” he said, “we value the modular and future-proof concept of services,” noting that the flexibility afforded by these services frees up resources so they can focus on improving their clients’ experiences.
CEO of equensWorldline, Michael Steinbach, in expressing his enthusiasm for the partnership, touched on the current payments landscape:
“With the rapidly changing customer demands and an accelerating digitalization of the payments arena, going along with the development into a global end-to-end real-time and technically standardized payments world, banks are now seriously investigating the introduction of a new business and operational model for their payments processing business.”
Banks, he goes on to remark, because of the substantial investment needed to provide an end-to-end, real-time payments infrastructure, sourcing models for processing are a way to mitigate monetary investment and complexity for banks of any size.
If you are interested in learning more about what is going on in the payments industry, check out our article on the current trends driving the industry here.
By Elliot Lyons, Research Analyst
