Request to Pay Is Live in Italy: What CBI Sees for B2B and B2G

Quick Summary

Can a payment request in your banking app change how businesses get paid? Alessio Castelli, Head of Marketing and Sales at CBI, tells FF News host Ian Horne why Request to Pay is an important milestone for European payments. CBI launched it in production in 2025, starting with a public administration scheme, and is now bringing in corporates.

What problem does Request to Pay solve?

Request to Pay lets corporates and other billers send a payment request that arrives in the customer's internet banking. Castelli says every player in the value chain gains. Banks keep the last-mile relationship with customers and can cross-sell and upsell. Corporates can offer a new payment option that users rate highly, and payers can pay beyond card limits and see new requests immediately.

He cites results from countries with heavy adoption: about 85% higher customer satisfaction than traditional instruments, about 20% higher checkout conversion and about 25% higher average transaction value in sectors such as e-commerce.

How does Request to Pay fit with instant payments and Name Check?

Castelli describes it as a simple message between a biller and a payer. It is agnostic to the final payment method, so instant payments and every other option stay available. Request to Pay only tells the payer that a new payment request has been issued to them.

How is adoption going in Italy?

The first use case was a business-to-government payment scheme. Italy has a centralised system for public administration payments, which gave CBI a route to many public bodies and helped it reach a customer base. The second step is the corporate landscape, where Castelli says early signals are encouraging. Corporates want better treasury efficiency, easier reconciliation and the chance to offer discounts to customers who pay immediately.

He expects insurance and telecoms to benefit most, because those industries have frequent contact with the same customer rather than a single purchase.

What are the barriers, and what comes next?

Some corporates are wary of the technical side of Request to Pay. Payment service providers and frequent system integrators can turn that into a simple integration, Castelli says. Looking ahead he wants interoperability under the European Payments Council scheme and beyond Europe for companies with international business. He also sees room for new validated services and attachments with requests, and for Request to Pay to support the digital euro.

FF NEWS TAKE:

Request to Pay has been promised for years, and CBI's route is the sensible one. Start with public administrations, where a central system delivers volume, then bring corporates in once customers already recognise the request. The uplift figures Castelli quotes come from other markets, so Italian numbers are the ones to ask for next. The real barrier is not the technology, it is convincing a finance team that a message in a banking app is worth the integration work.