Bluecode is an innovative and 100% European-owned and based optical mobile payment system that bypasses the foreign-controlled payment conduits. Our vision is to provide a purely European payment scheme as an alternative to US-based offerings like Apple Pay or Google Pay.
We started our operations in 2012 and evolved to the Bluecode Scheme (payment network) in 2017. We are the only private owned European optical mobile payment solution connecting European banks, merchants and customers cross-border. We have built a (legal) payment scheme like Mastercard or Visa, but based on European rules and regulation. The payment is anonymous, providing “security by design”. Technologically, we are an optical payment method like Alipay or WeChat, being available on all mobile devices.
With combining our payment solution with value added services (like loyalty cards, stamp cards, vouchers etc) we help merchants to digitalize the check-out process by allowing inter alia one-step check out (loyalty card and payment in one step), self-check-out and getting rid of paper based solutions (stamp cards, vouchers, receipts etc). Banks as issuers can keep the customer relationship with themselves instead transferring it to the huge US companies like Apple or Google. By participating on Bluecode, banks are also avoiding business models that use the data of the bank customers for their purposes. We give consumers the possibility to pay with an European payment method, that is anonymous, and fully in line with the European GDPR, but gives the same ease of use as the US solutions and in addition allowing them to combine payment with value added services as an convenient and exceptional check-out experience.
What we do is fully in line with the EU strategy in retail payments. The EU commission stated in its Retail Payment Strategy paper, published on 24.09.2020 (COM (2020) 592 final):
“(…) payments have become strategically significant. They are the lifeblood of the European economy. (…)The Covid-19 pandemic has further reinforced the shift to digital payments and confirmed the vital importance of safe, accessible and convenient (including contactless) payments for remote and face-to-face transactions.(…) EU payments market remains, to a significant degree, fragmented along national borders, as most domestic payment solutions based on cards or instant payments do not work cross-border. This comes to the advantage of a handful of big global players, which capture the whole intra-European cross-border payments market. With the exception of those large global players, including worldwide payment card networks and large technology providers, there is virtually no digital payment solution that can be used across Europe to make payments in shops and in e-commerce.”
We have the vision to build this pan-European payment scheme and creating benefits for European merchants, banks, acquirers and consumers. By interconnecting with other existing European mobile payment systems via the European Mobile Payment Systems Association (EMPSA) we enable all EMPSA participants and their customers to access all merchants cross border, cross scheme. . The EMPSA initiative has been recogoniced already on the European level. The EU Commission is mentioning it in its Retail Payment Strategy paper, published on 24.09.2020 as one of the “promising market-driven initiatives” that have emerged with the aim at “increasing cooperation and interoperability between domestic payment solutions” (COM(2020) 592 final, page 4).
