nexo Standards Gaining Ground in France
As European direct debits and credit transfers are becoming the norm, EU-wide harmonisation for card payments is starting to take shape. In order to escape national card industry constraints, many large-scale groups have implemented nexo standards. Natixis Payments just took this step, and announced they want to assist merchants in the new European payment landscape.
The nexo standard was created to streamline management processes for cross-border payments. It already processed one billion transactions in France. Merchants, banks and processors are working together to craft products and services best suited to their specific needs.
Natixis Payments bets on the openness inherent to nexo to include new features more quickly. The group already unveiled new services based on nexo: first, always up-to-date software for self-reliant POS devices, helping merchants integrate new means of payment more easily; second, an app for airline companies, enabling them to accept in-flight payments on a mobile phone or a tablet.
This financial institution can already count on a customer, Carrefour, which intends to design a multi-protocol acceptance platform, able to process nexo flows and send them to their European acquirers. Natixis Payments also wants to sell this solution to other banking players.
Comments – An optimisation lever
Exchanges have become global and payments’ standardisation is a major issue for industry players today, especially for merchants. According to ACI Worldwide –one of nexo’s direct members– 80% of merchants’ annual investments are assigned to maintaining different existing systems. nexo is meant to deal with this issue, enabling retailers to roll out a comprehensive acceptance solution in the countries they address. They may then reduce card acquiring costs and speed up their rollouts. Many large-scale groups have opted for nexo, including Carrefour, Décathlon and Auchan (which concluded their shift to this standard for their card activities in France).
On this fast-evolving market, banks must make sure they understand the issues at stake for merchants. Natixis Payments, for its part, intends to play a key part in building the Europe of payments, with merchants’ needs in mind. Yet, this subsidiary of BPCE isn’t the first French bank to roll out nexo: a year ago, BNP Paribas announced they also selected this standard.