EXCLUSIVE: “Check, Check… and Check!” – Pilar Fragalà, CBI in ‘The Fintech Magazine’

Having launched its own IPR-compliant Verification of Payee service with added-value features, Italy’s financial utility provider CBI is ready to ‘revolutionise’ B2C transactions with fast, seamless and cost-efficient Request To Pay

The payments landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the push for ever-faster, safer and more efficient financial transactions – especially cross-border.

One of the most impactful recent developments in this space has been the European Union’s Instant Payment Regulation (IPR), which, since October, has mandated that banks and payment service providers (PSPs) within Europe be capable of issuing and receiving instant payments in a compliant manner. This regulation marked a critical step towards enhancing the efficiency and security of payments within the Single European Payments Area (SEPA). It will also directly impact other states that have special arrangements with it, including Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Monaco and the UK.

Alongside instant credit transfers, IPR introduces several other obligations, including Verification of Payee (VoP), equal charges for all payment types, and stringent sanctions-screening rules. These changes, while essential, present considerable challenges for PSPs, particularly when it comes to technological readiness and regulatory compliance.

CBI, Italy’s key financial industry utility, has played a pivotal role in helping local and pan-European institutions navigate these new demands. With a vast network that comes from serving more than 400 financial institutions, CBI is at the forefront of providing solutions to help them comply with IPR – not only that, but turn compliance into a commercial advantage.

Notably, CBI has developed the Name Check platform, which offers a centralised mechanism for VoP, enabling PSPs to check that payments are directed to the correct beneficiary. This functionality reduces the time and costs of regulatory adaptation and provides enhanced protection against fraud, a crucial requirement for achieving instant payment compliance CBI is also leading the development of Request to Pay (RTP), a service designed to bridge gaps in payment infrastructure, ensuring seamless communication between PSPs and financial institutions across borders.

Through this, CBI is also playing a key role in open banking and open finance innovations that will shape the future of European payments. By leveraging existing infrastructures, CBI is addressing the challenge of integrating less advanced payment systems, helping to unlock the full potential of the IPR. These significant efforts position CBI as a crucial enabler of the European payments revolution, supporting institutions in their digital transformation, while fostering a secure, interconnected financial ecosystem.

We spoke to the company’s Chief Commercial Officer, Pilar Fragalà, to discover how its B2B2C approach to developing infrastructure, innovative services and digital ecosystems is playing out.

THE FINTECH MAGAZINE: CBI clearly covers a lot of bases when it comes to payments. Now we are just the other side of the October deadline for the mandatory implementation of VoP, how prepared has the Italian banking ecosystem been for this shift, and what role is CBI playing in supporting compliance with that, specifically?

PILAR FRAGALÀ: Our ecosystem players have been actively working to prepare for this deadline and, while the transition certainly presents both technical and operational challenges, the sector has made significant progress to ensure compliance within the required time frame.

As a key player in Italy’s financial infrastructure, CBI is playing a central role in supporting this shift. It is providing a standard design and interoperable solution to enable seamless VoP implementation across the Italian market. CBI is also trying to facilitate collaboration between banks and PSPs, offering technical guidance. Thanks to this, Italy is well-positioned to meet the regulatory expectations and enhance the fight against fraud and misdirected payments.

TFM: How would you say your solution is different from others in the market, in terms of scalability and reliability for financial institutions in Italy and across Europe?

PF: CBI’s VoP solution isn’t just a compliant service; it’s strategically designed to deliver interoperability, scalability and operational excellence for financial institutions. It offers neutral governance with European reach within a plug-and-play architecture, making it a highly reliable and forward-looking solution for the evolving digital payment landscape. Our verification-based solution stands out due to its centralised, interoperable and future-proof approach, designed to assure both regulatory compliance and long-term value for financial institutions. It offers what is essentially a centralised infrastructure with wide market reach, made possible because of our well-established CBI Globe platform, which has already been adopted by more than 400 PSPs in Italy.

These existing networks offer immediate scalability and lower the implementation barrier for participants. With real-time, high-accuracy matching between name and IBAN (international bank account number), the VoP system performs as a real-time IBAN name check, recording either an exact match, partial match, or no match.

In addition to that, it’s our European interoperability which further differentiates us, because we have signed a strategic agreement, enabling cross-border VoP services across several EU countries and also the UK. This positions CBI as a pan-European hub for VoP, which is unique in the Italian and broader EU market.

We have also developed value-added services. Being a system-wide solution, CBI VoP enables the transmission of additional anti-fraud information to the payer, leveraging the information held by participants’ PSPs, such as the commercial trade name or reports on IBANs involved in banking fraud. Then we also have a modular and API-driven architecture, a trusted industry consortium model.

It’s not just about helping to execute the payments, though. We also fully support our clients with customer communication and onboarding. Beyond the technology, we support our partners with ready-to-use communication material, customised to enable PSPs to engage with their customers. And we provide dedicated onboarding support for clients’ internal technical teams, including documentation and webinars.

TFM: RTP is really starting to take off as an alternative, faster and lower-cost payment solution that can help overcome some of the complexities surrounding cross-border transactions, in particular. CBI has been active in driving innovation around RTP, so what do you see as the possibilities here, and how does RTP fit into the broader suite of your services?

“CBI’s VoP solution isn’t just a compliant service, it’s strategically designed to deliver interoperability, scalability and operational excellence”

PF: CBI’s RTP enables PSPs to offer businesses an advanced system for managing digital collection. With RTP, the PSP allows the sending of payment requests, which are delivered to end-users through their own banking or mobile app, ensuring a simple and fast user experience. Our solution is designed to integrate with PagoPA [an electronic payments system, available throughout Italy for transactions with Italian public administration bodies] and other European schemes, providing PSPs with an interoperable model that’s capable of improving the management of financial flow and optimising the corporate collection process.

The CBI service suitable for integration with payment notices is called CBILL. This allows online communication and payment of bills issued by companies for things like electricity, water, insurance and utilities, as well as PagoPA payment notices issued by public administrations for taxes and duties, etc. The PagoPA use case can be seen as a starting point to channel investment into RTP in Italy, but at the same time, there is great interest on the part of banks in developing further use cases for RTP through wider partnerships with other players in the private sector that can ensure greater interoperability.

In October, we successfully concluded the testing phase with one of the major banking groups at European level. Building on this momentum, I would like to extend an invitation to all European RTP service providers to join us in launching a cross-border pilot, inspired by the model we previously implemented for VoP.

TFM: Of course, it is arguably consumers and merchants who stand to benefit most from the growing availability of RTP solutions, thanks to the increased ease and lower costs that they can bring. How is CBI supporting user experience and adoption for both consumers and merchants in the RTP space?

PF: CBI RTP is definitely gaining traction as a value-added service that complements instant payments by enabling structured, user-friendly payment requests. This is particularly relevant in sectors like utilities, insurance and e-commerce, where payment certainty and reconciliation are very critical. This is where, as I mentioned, we are working with a major banking group on developing a use case that’s currently in its proof-of-concept phase.

Involving PagoPA, which is a standard-designed electronic payment system, the first release of this new offering is imminent. In terms of the consumer and merchant reaction to the rise of RTP, the technology is very relevant in sectors like utilities, insurance and e-commerce, because they really need faster and more secure payments. Therefore, I think RTP will be revolutionary in this market.

In the corporate sector, it’s not so easy to introduce innovation, and the use case we’re about to release into production will help the first users see the importance of this service and the difference it could make

This article was published in The Fintech Magazine Issue #37, Page 28-29