Project description
A smart way to pay in stores
Modern payment methods have rapidly replaced cash, personal cheques and even credit cards. However, the credit card networks (Visa and MasterCard) and electronic payment tools (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet) are all based in the United States, creating an unfavourable situation for the European financial industry. The result is a constant danger of losing revenue from transactions. The EU-funded Bluecode project proposes an advanced mobile payment solution that will allow European entities to handle the entire non-cash payment process. Based on barcodes (Tokens), the process ensures anonymity, security and resilience to cyberthreats. The market of non-cash payments is constantly growing in Europe and their Blue Code solution aims to process 20 % of transactions by 2020.
Objective
Cash has been the most popular payment method for centuries, but it is quite cumbersome and expensive. Decades ago, the payment possibilities were broadened with cheques and debit/credit cards, and recently a new generation of alternatives brought by FinTech companies is disrupting the industry with eWallets, contactless payment, etc. However, most of these new payment tools inevitably involve resorting to USA-based card networks (Visa and MasterCard) and electronic payment tools (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet). This represents a dramatic situation for the European financial industry, threatened to lose the revenues generated by the transactions but also the ‘emotional’ link with customers and even the whole payment process (consumers migrating to USA banks).
How can we help tackling this challenge? Blue Code is an innovative mobile payment solution that will avoid the need of resorting to USA players to conduct the non-cash payments in Europe. Through our 100% European payment scheme, the entire payment process is conducted with European entities, so all the revenues and customer interface remains internally. Besides, we assure ‘security by design’ through an innovative payment method based on barcodes (Tokens) that keeps all the process anonymous, so no sensitive data like name, address or bank account is managed, and thus there are no possibilities of hacking of misuse.
In Europe, 130 billion non-cash transactions are performed each year and this number is growing 6.5% annually. The alternative payment methods like Blue Code are increasing its relevance and are estimated to process 20% of the total cashless transactions by 2020, taking one third of the total revenues generated, thus a total addressable market of €22 billion. Thanks to the technical advances and commercial milestones brought by this project, we estimate to generate €19.6 million cumulative profit by 2022 and 14 new job positions.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
6020 INNSBRUCK
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.