Michael Pechner’s been at Digicash/Payconiq Luxembourg’s steering wheel for a year. And what a year we had. Just take a look of our results:
- More than 400 000 downloads
- More than 110 000 active users
- 91% awareness among residents * TNS Study 2019
- 73% of cities that allow residents to pay with the app
He promises, however, the best is yet to come in 2020, so we had to squeeze the information out of him… and share it with you and everyone else, really.
The Digicash busy bees raised the bar really high in 2019 – the numbers speak for themselves. How will we top that in 2020?
The great results we’ve had in 2019 are the outcome of our teams’ relentless work in the past two years. Achieving this level of visibility and adoption rates is no easy task and I’m very grateful for the hard-working, perseverant team we have in Luxembourg.
In 2020, we’re taking our game to the next level. We’ve already announced that Digicash will change its logo to become Digicash by Payconiq early 2020. That’s not just for the sake of fashion and trendiness, it’s actually for a very pragmatic reason: to let Payconiq users in Belgium and the Netherlands know that they will soon be able to pay their bills or police fines from Luxembourg. Before long, they will be able to scan the specific Digicash QR codes with their Payconiq or Payconiq by Bancontact apps.
But that’s not all… we keep the best for the end of 2020.
What will happen then ?
By the end of the year, Digicash will fully embrace its international family, and cross-border mobile payments will become a reality in the Benelux area. This is one of the most frequent demands we’ve heard from our users in Luxembourg: be able to pay with their mobile phones in other countries. We’re happy to finally be able to offer them this long-waited feature. The merchants will also benefit from new features the current platform doesn’t support.
Ever since Payconiq has acquired Digicash, in 2017, we’ve been thinking about the best and least user disruptive solution to connect Luxembourg with Belgium and the Netherlands and build the first cross-border mobile payments platform in Europe. We’re nearly there now and we couldn’t be prouder.
What makes Payconiq better than other FinTech firms trying to make it in the mobile payments sector?
Where do I even get started? We don’t just offer a mobile payments app, we have a payments platform, servicing consumers, merchants, banks and other PSPs. We’re based on the SEPA credit transfer system, which in practice means that any user with a bank account and a smartphone can enjoy a digital payment experience on-the-go. When paying online within our merchant ecosystem, there is no need to leave any sensitive personal data on the merchant site, making it a frictionless payment experience.
Another strength we have is that we don’t compete against banks; we enable them. We work closely with 12 banks in Europe (i.e. ASN Bank, Axa Bank, BCEE, Belfius, BNP Paribas, BIL, ING, KBC, Post Luxembourg, Rabobank, Regio Bank and SNS) and allow them to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive sector.
