When it comes to commenting on the condition of banking services in Italy, it is always useful to show this figure, which, updated with the data produced each year by the ECB, shows the number of non-cash transactions per capita in the main countries of the Union.
From this it follows that:
– Italy's backwardness (represented by the lowest curve) is not only towards the three major European countries, but also towards Spain which, which started 15 years ago from a position similar to ours, has long since clearly surpassed us ;
– the slight increase in the number of electronic transactions in recent years would make us close the gap against our major competitors in no less than 50 years;
– if it were possible to speed up the realignment, the national payments industry could count on around twenty billion more annual revenues, as a result of increases in revenues from electronic transactions, net of cash handling costs. To give an idea of the magnitude of this estimate, the total 2015 revenues of the Italian banking system (from credit, financial and services intermediation) amounted to approximately 80 billion;
– a phenomenon of this magnitude could only occur through a sharp increase in competition between intermediaries, to the benefit of the consumer.
Therefore, starting from a serious condition of delay, great opportunities could be generated, provided that the key to starting a virtuous circuit is found, encouraging consumer preferences on the one hand, and intervening on the offer policies of intermediaries on the other.
So far, however, neither the technology nor the offer of new products nor the price policies nor the payment and electronic money institutions, created following the First European Payment Services Directive (PSD1,2010), and still little known by the great public, were able to produce the long-awaited discontinuity. However, it should not be forgotten that the merit of PSD1, together with other regulatory initiatives, was to give legal foundation to SEPA, the single euro payments area, which standardized card transactions, by bank transfer and direct debit, obliging the intermediaries to the same treatment, including economic, of transactions within a country and between countries of the European Union.
On the other hand, disruptive effects on the banking and non-banking payment industry are expected from the entry into force in 2018 of the Second European Directive on payment services, the so-called PSD2, which will forcefully invest the financial system, leading the way to the "open bank" model.
In fact, this new regulation obliges banks to make their IT infrastructures and archives accessible for both informational and operational purposes to new types of operators, called third-party suppliers. The traditional bank/customer relationship will be substantially modified, requiring banks to modify a business model still today rooted in the networks of physical branches set up to protect the territory, in order to react to the pressures of disintermediation.
It is a prospect which is still little discussed, but in which old and new forces of the banking services market will confront each other. There are already those who speak of the "uberisation" of the bank, referring to the business model of private transport services which have entered into competition with taxi companies, and, more generally, of open banking, i.e. banking platforms open to widespread use and new.
This article places emphasis on the need to expose to the general public the operational characteristics of the new players, the thrusts of technology, the repositioning strategies of the banks, and the consequences on the final consumers of banking services produced by the new European rules.
