SIA and Swish launch m-commerce push
Milan based SIA plans to use its deal with Swish to support mobile commerce
Italian financial infrastructure company SIA has inked a deal with mobile commerce provider Swish Payments to support mobile payments in Africa and Europe. The two firms claim the deal will help to bring more efficient forms of payment to both regions.
Through SIA’s technology infrastructure, SIA’s subsidiary Perago will support the Swish solution that uses a mobile app and card reader for both chip and magnetic stripe card to effectively convert a merchant’s smartphone or tablet into a POS terminal so businesses can accept debit and credit card payments from any location.
Perago will provide Swish with the SIA gateway for payment switching to all international circuits in conjunction with a PCI-compliant Acquirer Independent solution for transaction authorisation and clearing. The SIA technology platform will be combined with the Swish solution to support multiple acquirers in multiple countries for mPOS.
Swish Payments will be launching the new mobile POS solution in Africa and in 20 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, United Kingdom) starting later this year.
Swish expects to reach about 400,000 merchant subscribers by the end of 2016.
“In addition to our proven experience in creating advanced systems for central banks, RTGS in particular, starting today Perago opens up its infrastructures to new services such as payment card transaction management,” said Claudio Ceresani, chief executive of Perago. “With this in mind, our agreement with Swish Payments represents an important milestone for SIA Group as this is the first card processing agreement in Africa, and it allows us to expand our portfolio with the integrated offer of the parent company SIA.”
M-commerce has gradually been rising in recent years. In April, payment services provider Adyen reported that one in five payments made on its network are now being made using a mobile device. The company processed $14 billion in payments last year, of which $2.2 billion were mobile transactions.
Founded in 1977 by the Bank of Italy, SIA designs, creates and manages technology infrastructures and services for financial institutions, central banks, public administrations and businesses in the areas of payments, e-money, network services and capital markets.
