UniCredit extends Worldline open banking deal

Source: Worldline

UniCredit, one of the major pan-European banks, has renewed the partnership with Worldline [Euronext: WLN], a global leader in payment services, for the Open Banking Third Party Provider (TPP) service.

The partnership with Worldline allows UniCredit customers to connect their accounts in other banks throughout Europe via one single application programming interface (API). This enables UniCredit to effectively offer Account Information Services (AIS) and Payment Initiation Services (PIS) and opens up a range of business opportunities for both UniCredit and its customers. UniCredit has been using Worldline’s Open Banking TPP service since 2020. The partnership has been extended for another two years.

Cost-effective reach, enabling new services to support further growth

The partnership with Worldline provides huge benefits in terms of efficiency. Instead of establishing separate connections with many different banks, UniCredit gains extensive and cost-effective reach throughout Europe through a single API. Via this API, Worldline enables UniCredit and its customers to execute PIS and AIS services.

What’s more, Worldline’s secure Open Banking infrastructure translates the formats of all different banks into a single API. This removes the complexity and friction of many diverse integrations and allows UniCredit to provide its customers with the ability to get a consolidated view of all their bank accounts held with one or more banks. It also enables them to initiate an online payment at an account from other bank in Europe. In addition, Worldline’s Open Banking TPP service allows UniCredit to discover new business opportunities to develop new services to the benefit of corporate and individual customers.

Worldline is one of the largest Open Banking providers in Europe. The company has been actively working on PSD2/XS2A since 2014, aiming to help the industry to make PSD2 work in practice. Worldline is committed to unlocking the full potential of Open Banking by reaching around 3.500 banks in 19 countries across Europe and by enabling many use cases that allow banks to quickly and effectively create a value proposition for their clients. Besides the partnership for Open Banking, UniCredit also has long-term payment processing agreement with Worldline to handle all SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) transactions, instant payments, multi-currency, domestic and high value payments in Austria and Germany.

Alessandro Baroni, Chief Business Division Officer at Worldline Financial Services, says: “As a leading and fast-growing Paytech company, we want to support our clients to flourish in the API driven-economy beyond their regional markets and grasp opportunities from Open Banking and Open Finance. We are proud that UniCredit decided to extend our existing partnership. It demonstrates their recognition of our added value, and we look forward to continue supporting them in their Open Banking journey.’’

Luca Corsini, Head of Transactions and Payments at UniCredit, says: “As a tier 1 bank active in different European countries, we rely on support from a supplier with both scale and a cross-European presence in order to address the challenges and opportunities our customers are facing. In the past two years, Worldline has proven their Open Banking capabilities by providing cost-effective reach across Europe and enabling the services that our customers require. In addition, we are currently also building further on the opportunities that arise from PSD2 and Open Banking.”