Lisbon, Nov. 14, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's MB Way online financial transfer and payment system has made its first international transfers, in collaboration with two European counterparts, Bancomat of Italy and Bizum of Spain and Andorra, said SIBS, the company that owns MB Way.

In a statement on Wednesday, SIBS said that MB Way, Bancomat and Bizum had established "interoperability between their services and carried out the first cross-border instant payment transactions."

In other words, users of MB Way, Bancomat and Bizum made transfers among themselves, which means that for the first time it was possible to use MB Way to send money to systems in other countries.

"For the SIBS company, this moment reflects our commitment to innovation and to continuing, with MB WAY, to be pioneers in European payments," said Madalena Cascais Tomé, the CEO of SIBS.

At the end of 2023, SIBS, Bancomat and Bizum announced a partnership for interoperability, with the aim that in the medium term their users would be able to make instant payments to each other. 

Following the transfers made on Wednesday, SIBS predicted that, from 2025, "this service will be widely available, initially in Italy, Portugal and Spain" but with the possibility of expansion as "approaches are being made with other solutions that could join this project and extend the scope of the EuroPA project to other countries."

The three operators together have more than 45 million users and represent more than 182 financial institutions.

IM/ARO // ARO.

Lusa