Sia and Raphaels Bank have signed a partnership agreement for the development and launch of payment solutions in the UK and the rest of Europe. Under the agreement, Raphaels and Sia, a company specializing in the management of electronic payments, will offer Sepa payment services to customers.
This will give UK and European businesses access to STEP2, EBA Clearing's pan-European technology platform for euro retail payments operated by SIA. The infrastructure currently handles an average of over 40 million SEPA transactions per day, connecting over 4.800 financial institutions in 34 European countries.
The partnership will also strengthen the positions of Sia and Raphaels in the prepaid card market. Sia currently handles 3,3 billion card transactions and over 65 million payment cards across 16 European countries, while Raphaels settles over £6 billion annually with its credit, debit and prepaid cards.
In the area of mobile payments, SIA will enable Raphaels, direct issuer of Visa and MasterCard, to offer contactless payments via smartphone through the "SIA EasyPay" platform. SIA's services support SIM-based technology and Host Card Emulation (HCE), and represent an important step forward in simplifying access to mobile payments.
Furthermore, Raphaels will have the possibility to offer its customers instant payments thanks to "Jiffy", the "Person to Person" (P2P) transfer service developed by Sia and based on Sepa bank transfer which allows you to send and receive money in real time via smartphone. The next evolutions of the service include payments to affiliated merchants (P2B) and the Public Administration (P2G).
SIA will also supply the Payment Gateway platform which allows connection with various channels (such as ATMs, POS, large-scale distribution tills, etc.) offering its customers the possibility of paying in any way for a wide variety of services.
