Dutch payment processor iDeal to become European standard

The European Payments Initiative (EPI) acquired the Dutch payment system iDEAL with the aim of making it the standard payment solution across all European countries. According to iDEAL, the EPI acquisition “demonstrates the value and reliability of our payment solution.”

iDEAL is the system through which online shopping payments go off directly from your bank account. If you buy something online in the Netherlands, chances are that you’re doing it through iDEAL. Over 1.2 billion payments happen through iDEAL per year, with over 6 million on peak days. “70% of all e-commerce transactions in the Netherlands are paid with iDEAL,” according to the company.

In the coming period, the EPI - a collaboration of banks and payments systems in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and Germany - will explore how to best fit iDEAL into its strategy to develop a payment standard for the European market. A payment standard will make innovation easier, they believe.

The first step is to make iDEAL the standard in France and Germany because the countries don’t yet have a standard payment system for e-commerce, according to AD. Customers in the Netherlands will notice little of this.

In the meantime, the current iDEAL owner, Currence, continues to work on a new version of iDEAL, which will enable customers to save things like their preferred bank for even easier payments and make it easier for more banks and online stores to join up. The expectation is that iDeal will eventually be absorbed by the EPI.