EAPS, the alliance of European debit card schemes that facilitates pan-European ATM and point-of-sale (POS) transactions, has announced that two of its participants have opened their ATM networks in Italy and Germany to domestic debit cardholders from each other’s country. Consorzio Bancomat and Zentraler Kreditausschuss now allow each other’s cardholders to withdraw cash from ATM networks in Italy (Bancomat) and Germany (girocard) respectively. Cross-border POS acceptance between the two card schemes will follow soon.
Ugo Bechis, chairman of the EAPS board and head of SEPA-Payments at UBI Banca, said: “The development between Consorzio Bancomat and Zentraler Kreditausschuss shows EAPS’ capacity to extend the use of domestically issued debit cards for transactions across Europe. EAPS is a viable and established European card brand, which is gaining in strength and deployment volume. EAPS is aligned to the expectations of the European Commission and the European Central Bank for a European card payment scheme to emerge within the single euro payments area.”