• eTEN Home
  • About eTEN
    • eTEN Leaflet 
    • eTEN Brochure 
    • eTEN and Enlargement 
    • eTEN Themes 
  • eTEN Legal Reference Documents
  • eTEN Calls
  • eTEN Contacts
  • eTEN FAQ
  • eTEN How To
  • eTEN Library
  • eTEN News Room
  • eTEN Projects
  • eTEN Online Project Database
  • eTEN Site Map
  • eTEN Users Database
    (experts, partners, guests)

Alternate presentations:

ACTIVITIES :: eTen :: Projects :: Projects of the Month :: Eu-Pay

September 2007 Project of the Month: Eu-Pay

EU–Pay: European Multi-channel and Multi-purpose integrated European payment circuit.

Objectives of the project

The purpose of the EU-Pay service is to provide a simple, multi-channel payment collection mechanism for public authorities. It is especially targeted at citizens who do not have credit cards, banking standing order mechanisms or access to the Internet. By way of example, it will allow citizens to pay bills from public authorities when shopping at the supermarket, or when using a mobile phone.

The objective is to validate all services by:

• validate the integrated EU-Pay services in 5 different pilot locations

• involve a significant number of users in each locality

• test market acceptance of the EU-Pay payment mechanism

Many European public administrations are trying to experiment with specialised payment services supporting their e-Government plans. The availability of the EU -Pay system will help administrations reduce their investments in ancillary services (like those related to payments) and encourage service management automation and on-line service provision. It will furthermore provide European citizens with a useful instrument supporting their need for mobility, as it will be possible, by using the proposed system, to pay a bill with an entity located in another country, from another temporary location located in another EU member state.

Services

Using the EUPAY platform, the validation of new payment channels will be applied to the following services deployed by public authorities to citizen:

1.     PERIBUS service: subscriptions to the school transportation service in 13 cities (web, sms CAP)

2.     Payment of local council taxes on domestic properties (supermarkets, Sheffield)

3.     Payment of parking fines (supermarkets, Sheffield)

4.     Payment of sundry payments (supermarkets, Sheffield)

5.     Payment of tuition fees for students at university (web, Varna)

6.     Payment of nursery and elementary school fees (supermarkets, Prato)

7.     Payment of municipality fines (web, shops, supermarkets, Prato)

8.     Payment of health care tickets (web, shops, supermarkets, Prato)

9.     Payment of local taxes (web, shops, supermarkets, Prato)

10.   MOPAS service payment for parking fees (sms, Saarbruecken)

11.   NFOGIS service payment for access to GIS data (web, Saarbruecken)

12.   Library entrance fees (web, kiosks, Saarbruecken)

Achievements & Benefits

The 6 pilot sites have finished the integration, of the various services, using the same IT infrastructure including back-office, and have opened their channel on their specific services. Survey around the technical validation has started. CONAD officially launched the payment at supermarket checkouts selecting 6 locations in the Prato province and in 4 supermarkets of the Commune of Pisa.

Expected benefits by the end of the project

The usage of the EU-Pay platform does not require any specialist knowledge; the underlying system is completely transparent and it will make a significant contribution to improving Accessibility for All and reducing the Digital Divide.

The expected benefits by the end of the project are the following:

• Support of a multi-channel payment system in which the management of different payment channels are integrated in the same IT infrastructure.

• Interaction with the existing back-office IT resources of the payment beneficiary, in order to update payment status in real time.

• Introduction of an innovative billing philosophy for the payment network that can allow many different schemes for sharing the service costs among the different actors of the established network.

• Implementation of a centralised system for payment transfers which aims to reduce, as much as possible, the banking costs of the transactions.

• Cooperation with third party networks of points of presence ranging from single commercial shops to large commercial networks (e.g. supermarkets).

• Implementation of a flexible system architecture, supporting the payment network, allowing multinational cooperation among different entities.

Partners

The EU-Pay consortium consists of 5 contractors and 3 members in 6 European countries.

• Axetel Consulting Srl (ROM)

• City of Saarbrücken (GER)

• Communautè d'Agglomeration Perigourdine (FRA)

• Comune di Prato (coordinator) (ITA)

• Sheffield City Council (UK)

• Technical University of Varna (BUL)

• CONAD (ITA)

• IRES (ITA)

Reference Data

Project website: http://www.eu-pay.org/

Contract type: Market Validation Grant Agreement

Start and end date 1/05/2006 – 31/01/2008