Country: Luxembourg

Category: Fintech

Name: Digicash

Project Aim:

What is Digicash?

DIGICASH is one of the most advanced mobile payment products and ecosystems in the world, establishing Luxembourg as a leader in digitisation of retail payments. The partnership was created in 2012 as an alliance between a technology-focused start-up and Luxembourg’s retail banks. Luxembourg began to write its FinTech story before the use of this term actually became common.

How does it work?

For consumers, DIGICASH is a true revolution that significantly facilitates their daily lives: the product digitises their financial interaction with stores, bill issuers and even other users.

• P2P payments between consumers are triggered in three clicks. The product allows sending and requesting money to and from contacts by just using their phone numbers, funds are transferred using SEPA bank transfers from account to account;
• Invoice payments at home are made in 5 seconds. Consumers just scan the QR Code on invoices, authorise the payment with a PIN or fingerprint and it is done. QR Codes contain all necessary information for a secure payment, avoiding any error in the process of manual encoding;
• In stores, DIGICASH consolidates payments and loyalty cards and digitises the receipt. DIGICASH’s unique BEACON terminals also allow fully contactless payments;
• At restaurants, no need to wait for the waiter to come back with a card terminal. A QR Code is featured on the bill, patrons scan it and the payment is made in seconds. The waiter receives the confirmation directly on the cash register.
• For E-commerce and in Apps, no login or manual card data encoding is required. DIGICASH takes care of everything using a QR Code on the screen or getting payment data from other Apps, all payments are fully secure based on the authorisation by PIN code or fingerprint in the DIGICASH App on the user’s phone.

The App has been designed to be simple and fast but also highly secure by meeting bank security requirements.. All transactions are validated either using a fingerprint or a PIN Code.

Did you try it?

Some figures demonstrating the product’s success: The Digicash App was downloaded more than 120,000 times in Luxembourg, a country with a total population of 590,000. For invoice payments, more than 95% of utility and insurance bills contain DIGICASH QR Codes. Its availability with retailers is steadily increasing, already in the double digits – major partners include international players such as Auchan, Cora and Total. DIGICASH is gradually replacing cash in daily exchanges between individuals:  money transfer from bank account to bank account becomes as easy as sending a text message. With local banks BCEE, BGL BNP Paribas, BIL and POST as partners, the product already covers more than 80% of bank customers. A fifth bank will join the network in early 2017.

More recently, the App interface has been completely overhauled and redesigned over last summer to improve the user experience. Starting September 2016, a large scale campaign has been launched advertising the product both via mass media and direct marketing channels, with the goal to achieve a market coverage of 20% of all payments by 2019.

 

Its leading role in m-payment technology enabled DIGICASH to start implementing its product with other players in one of Luxembourg’s neighbouring countries.

DIGICASH is one the most successful digital payment products in Europe, demonstrating Luxembourg’s capacity to bundle its efforts and to foster innovation in a very efficient way focusing on embracing new opportunities that digitisation brings.

 

RAOUL MULHEIMS : “This award would highlight our company’s leading role in European payments digitisation, exposing both our award-winning product and Luxembourg’s unique design of a successful FinTech partnership between a start-up and all major retail banks”