Ingenico Group, Nets, Nexi, and Worldline have announced the launch of an EU advocacy alliance bringing together Europe’s independent payment services providers.

The “European Digital Payments Industry Alliance” (EDPIA)’s vision is for Europe to become a global leader in digital payments, which can fuel the completion of the Digital Single Market for the benefit of consumers, businesses and the public sector. It will do so by engaging in EU policy discussions impacting the EU payments sector, and by helping bring instant, secure and frictionless payments closer to EU citizens, businesses, and public bodies.

The EDPIA believes in a strong and properly enforced European policy framework that enables intense competition between transparent and market-based solutions that compete for trust of payment services users.

 To stimulate an innovative payments ecosystem, the EDPIA believes the EU should build on the EU’s SEPA project, which will allow new technologies like account-to-account payments to thrive, including on a cross-border basis. Though card payments will remain important in the future, these new technologies bring welcome diversity.